


Persephone Sings In Hell

by CatKing_Catkin



Series: Widomauk Week [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Death Fix, Day At The Beach, Demon Deals, Dream Sex, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Epic Friendship, Fix-It, Friendship/Love, Future Fic, Gen, Going to Hell, Hell Trauma, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Love Confessions, M/M, Mental Instability, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Other, Platonic Soulmates, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Requited Love, Rescue Missions, Resurrection, Sensory Deprivation, Slow Burn, Soul Bond, Speculation, Team as Family, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-17 21:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20628131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: The Mighty Nein finally return to Glory Run Road with the strength and materials needed to resurrect Mollymauk Tealeaf.They find to their horror that he can't be brought back because his soul is not free to return.After a bit of research, they find out who's keeping it sealed away, then delve down into the Abyss to murder the culprit and recover Molly's soul, setting him free from Lucien's deal. After one more resurrection research and a bit more research, they find out that a happy ending still might not be as easy as all that.Caleb and Yasha take Molly to Nicodranus to recover from his ordeal. Caleb recognizes his old feelings rekindling, and starts to dream again of confessing them.(Written for Widomauk Week, Day 1, prompt "reunion".)





	1. Cold and Alone

Attempting to raise Mollymauk Tealeaf from the dead only to find out that his soul was not free to return was a nasty shock, to say the least.

Jester tried first, and then in the midst of her panicked babbling Caduceus dipped into their stash of diamonds a second time and gathered three of them together to try again. He came to the same realization that she had and proved able to make use of his more formal training as a cleric to convey what that realization _meant_.

Raising the dead could only work if the soul was free and willing to return to the prime material plane. None of them who had known Molly doubted that he would have been willing to return to life. And it would have been another matter if the ritual had simply failed, if they’d established the connection but been unable to strengthen it enough to guide his soul back to them.

“But something blocked us,” Caduceus said grimly, as they sat huddled under the dome that night a scarce hundred feet away from the dug-up grave. The bones in their tapestry had been placed carefully back inside it just for now.

“Something bad,” Jester added, in little more than a whisper.

After that, well, of course there was nothing for it but to find out what was keeping them from their friend so it could be dealt with. Caduceus communed daily with the Wildmother to narrow down their avenues of search. Jester attempted to scry and was blocked immediately, but was at least able to confirm that Molly was on another plane of existence. Even then, they spent two days in Zadash, two days in Rohsohna, two in Uthodern, researching until they were half blind from it before Fjord woke up in a cold sweat from a memory that sent them back to Zadash as fast as Caleb could draw a teleportation circle.

_“Cold and alone_.” Caleb heard Fjord whispering that to himself as he waited for the last few lines to be drawn _“Cold and alone…”_

* * *

Tracking Cree down was entirely too much trouble for how increasingly dire the situation was starting to seem. Yasha in particular was little more than a grim force of nature at that point, ready to beat the answers out of Cree if that was what it took, but by the time they dragged the tabaxi out of hiding she turned out to be so desperate for help that she told them everything and then some with no provocation.

Lucien had been a man of boundless ambition, ready to do or give anything in pursuit of his goals. That had included making a deal with one of the minor demon princes of the Abyss – a deal for more power in life in exchange for his soul after death.

Caleb would never forget the look of dawning horror in Cree’s eyes as she finally started to realize why they must have come, why they’d gone to the trouble of dragging her out of the Gentleman’s tunnels and into the attic of the Leaky Tap. “He, he didn’t think it would come to that. If the plan had worked, he would have escaped it…”

She couldn’t finish the thought. Caleb finished it for her. Lucien had escaped his deal, for a time – he had died, and Mollymauk had been born. The soul had carried on, after a fashion, though in a way that Caleb could tell from Cree's reactions had never been the plan. Lucien had never, _would_ never have intended to be reborn so utterly changed.

_Joy can fill a lot in a person’s life_, Caleb remembered Mollymauk saying, in a moment when he’d been unable to lie. He dug his nails into his palms until they nearly bled.

But then Molly had died, and he’d cast no ritual to ensure that was not the end of it. He’d died thinking only of saving his friends and so the demon that Lucien had made his deal with had come to collect, uncaring that the soul it had torn free from the corpse had taken a different name.

It was Beau, of course, who said what they all were afraid to. “That was months ago,” she whispered, eyes wide, face bloodless. “Fuck. _Fuck.”_

It took all of them together to hold Yasha back when she went for Cree’s throat, and it took three castings of a calming spell from Caduceus before she stopped trying.

“We need her alive,” Caleb pleaded frantically, as he felt the whipcord tension thrumming through her slowly start to ease. “We can’t save him without her help. But we will, Yasha. _We will_.”

* * *

Cree didn’t know the demon’s name, but she was able to point them at the last hideout the Tomb Takers had occupied before scattering. Since they’d expected to be back, and no one else had known about it, they’d left some things behind.

Finding Lucien’s notes required going over most of the building with a fine-toothed comb before Nott found a loose cobblestone in a seemingly random patch of hallway. Actually decoding Lucien’s notes took Caleb and Jester another full day, and Jester still burst into tears of frustration halfway through it.

But eventually, they found the name they needed. And, on the dawn of the day that followed, the Mighty Nein all joined hands in a circle, and Caleb spoke the name of their destination down in the Abyss, and they all vanished together from the patch of barren woodlands outside the Tomb Takers’ hideout.

Their target was not the Demogorgon itself, but simply one of its servitors who held a fortress on the outer edges of the Gaping Maw. Even so, the great, spiraling towers of the palace Abysm could be clearly seen on the horizon despite the distance, and their twisted spires felt as if they were constantly watching the Mighty Nein. The very force of their presence bore down mercilessly.

It was a heavy weight on all their minds – out of nowhere, Nott drew a dagger on Fjord and actually tried to use it, screaming at him for being a thief. After that, Fjord refused to sleep or rest, muttering to himself that they were all planning to hurt him, they were all ready to hurt him, and he wouldn’t be caught unawares. Even Jester soon succumbed to the creeping madness of the place – she was cheerfully eager to kill anything in their path, anything that stood between them and Molly, even when Caleb tried to plead with her to remember that their only hope of getting out of there with their friend was to be quiet and stealthy. Sometimes Beau or Yasha could hold her back. Sometimes they couldn’t.

Caleb could feel the madness trying to overtake him, too, could feel it pressing down on his mind until cracks started to form. Sometimes he wondered if the hyperfocus he developed to resist it was a form of madness in its own right. He simply…refused to allow himself to break until they found Molly. Nothing else mattered. He could let himself succumb after the job was done. He knew that he probably would. _Time for that later_.

They finally breached the fortress and fought their way in to confront the demon lord – a glabrezu, to be precise, who went by the name of Ghorvash. Caleb tried to negotiate on their behalf, tried to tell whatever lie he could that might get them what they needed, but he could tell immediately that the monster disdained their efforts and Jester cut the negotiations short anyway by firing a guiding bolt at it without warning.

It was a bloody, brutal battle even by the bloody, brutal standards of their lives so far. Ghorvash summoned more, weaker demons to divide their efforts and give it a chance to lay into them with fists, pincers, and magic. Yasha very nearly died from its pincers nearly cutting her in half, but lived through it thanks to Caduceus’ Death Ward and Fjord’s quick intervention to heal her once she’d staggered back to her feet. Jester wasn’t so lucky – one final, brutal blow from its enormous fists slammed her so hard into the floor that it left a crater around her motionless, lifeless body.

The fighting grew even more frantic, after that, desperate to put an end to their foe in time to make use of a revivify spell. After Nott put out one of its eyes, Caleb finally got a chance to slam it to its knees with Cat’s Ire, and then Fjord was there to finish the job, sword aglow with the light of the Wildmother and a radiant moonbeam at his back.

As soon as the tumult died down, Caduceus bolted for Jester, his staff already glowing. Caleb left him to it. Moving like a puppet or a man possessed, he instead crossed the wrecked and ruined throne room towards the glabrezu's corpse. His gaze remained fixed on a black choker it wore around its neck, from which hung a carved black gemstone.

It had taken him far too long to realize that the fiend had been using it as an extra reserve of power. It had taken him even longer to realize _how_. But now the dust was settling, and Caleb was too exhausted to feel the dawning horror as anything more than a faint numbness in his fingertips.

It was a fairly small gemstone considering the glabrezu’s size, big enough to just barely fit in the palm of one of Caleb’s hands.

He had just enough time to realize that much before he was suddenly, violently assaulted with a storm of howling emotion and boundless pain. 

For what might have been a second or an hour or a hellish eternity, Caleb was subsumed in someone else’s grief. The second he laid hands on the gemstone there was suddenly a presence _there_, in his head and all around him, clawing at him, _clinging _to him. It had no voice to scream with, not truly, but the shape of words echoed through his mind all the same – _it’s dark it’s cold it hurts I’m scared please let me go please please please…_

_“Caleb!” _

He was brought forcibly back to reality by a sharp slap across the face, hard enough to send the gemstone flying from his hands and spinning away along the floor. Caleb stared after it in shock. It took him a second to recognize the sound of his own gasping breaths, to realize that there were tears on his cheeks.

“Caleb?” Nott asked, more quietly. He managed to force himself to look round at her. His little friend was rubbing life back into her hand and staring at him with wide yellow eyes. “Are you okay? Are you, I mean, um, _you?_ What _was_ that?”

As one, their gazes slid over to where the gem lay amidst the rubble. Caleb swallowed hard, rubbed fiercely at his eyes, then got to his feet to stagger over and retrieve it. “Wait!” Nott cried, catching his wrist – he shook her off and kept walking. She tried again, this time digging in her heels, but with a strength he didn’t know he had he shook her off and kept going. At that point, she turned to the others. He heard her calling out anxiously: “S-Someone? Anyone? Something’s really weird with Caleb right now!”

He barely heard her. He didn’t care. A not-insignificant part of Caleb recoiled at the idea of touching the gem again. His head was so full of rot at the best of times. He didn’t need to invite more in.

But the rest of him – the parts of him that had slowly, inexorably grown _better_ since that early morning on Glory Run Road – made sure he kept going. He knelt down before the gem and gathered it up in both hands. 

The psychic _assault_ started up again immediately, but this time Caleb was braced for it. “Shh,” he whispered, even as his eyes filled with tears, even as the weight of someone else’s fear and pain grew nearly _physical_, heavy enough to bow him beneath it. He curled himself around the gem, cradled it against his chest, and held on anyway. “Shh, Mister Mollymauk. It’s all right, I’m here now. We’re all here for you. Everything will be all right.”

He spoke the words aloud as much for his own sake and the sake of his assembled friends as he did for the trapped soul, unsure if Molly could hear him at all. Just in case, he tried to think and feel the words as hard as he could, tried to project his thoughts and feelings outward in the way he did to communicate with Frumpkin or even with Nott across a copper wire. Physical contact with the gem opened a connection, it seemed, and a connection could go both ways.

It took an enormous mental effort to hold his ground, to not break down beneath the thoughts and fears being forced upon him because the one they belonged to was at their limit. But Caleb gritted his teeth, counted his breaths, and held fast against the storm. He let it pass through and around him without taking hold of him, and all the while he tried to project a sense of calm and peace and _connection_. _I hear you. I know you. I’m here. _

Slowly, so slowly he didn’t realize right away that it was happening, the tumult in his mind grew quieter. The trapped spirit grew calmer – this seemed to surprise them as much as it relieved him. After all this time, they’d probably forgotten what it was like to be comforted and calmed, and the shock of it helped cut through the storm of emotion. He understood, so much and so well that it hurt.

So the oppressive presence all around him eased, until Caleb was aware only of a newfound warmth in the gem he held cradled in both hands. It was a soft, gentle heat, which it pulsed in time to the rabbit-like racing of his own heart, and he almost fancied he could see a faint pinprick of light beneath its faceted surface which brightened and dimmed to the same rhythm. Caleb smiled wearily to see it, and then startled when a strong, scarred hand reached into his field of view to run feather-light fingertips over the smooth black gem.

“You think Mollymauk is really in there?” Yaska asked quietly. He looked up to see her gaze fixed on the jewel, and that all the rest of the Mighty Nein had gathered around him, too.

Throat tight, weary beyond words, Caleb nodded.

“So,” Jester whispered, twisting her fingers anxiously in front of her. “So if we, like, break it – would that set him free?”

“It might,” Caduceus said. “But it also might hurt him. That kind of shock…if this situation is what it looks like, I’m not sure if he could take that. At least not without a body to return to. Let’s, ah. Let’s get him back to where he should be. Then we’ll try that ritual again. How’s that sound?”

It sounded good to all of them, right up until Jester and Caduceus compared the contents of their packs and realized that bringing Jester back had cost them enough diamonds that they no longer had enough to attempt another resurrection ritual. Acquiring more wouldn’t be a problem in and of itself – they’d looted plenty of gold and treasure from Ghorvash’s fortress so far – but Caleb still wasn’t capable of teleporting them more than once per day without the aid of a teleportation circle. That would mean at least two nights’ rest before they could try to bring Molly back again, two more nights for Molly himself to suffer in darkness and isolation. Knowing how long he’d been trapped so far didn’t make the comparatively small delay any easier – quite the opposite, in fact. It felt like failure, felt like _betrayal_, like uselessness that Molly was having to pay for.

_If only we’d thought to bring his bones_, Caleb mused bitterly to himself, as they all bedded down for the night in the picked-clean shell of the Tombtakers’ old hideout. They could have cast the ritual as soon as they acquired the diamonds if they’d just had Molly’s bones with them, rather than needing to waste another teleport to get them back to Glory Run Road. But they’d rewrapped the remnants of their friend after the first failed attempt and reburied him back in his grave. It had felt right, at the time. Now it felt foolish, careless, thoughtless. 

_We are getting too good at leaving you behind, my friend_, Caleb thought bitterly, as he kept his watch alongside Frumpkin, safe within the confines of the hut. Even keeping watches at all was a testament to their collective restlessness rather than necessity. _We are getting too much practice at burying you_.

And yet, as he caught sight of Yasha stirring fitfully in her sleep, Caleb realized that there was still something he could do to help make things easier on everyone.

Moving gingerly, stepping over Fjord and sidling around Nott, he knelt down beside Yasha and gave her shoulder a firm shake. She came awake quickly enough, blinking blearily in the dim light of the dome before managing to focus on him.

“Take over for me,” Caleb whispered, nodding toward the spot he’d just vacated. And then: “I’ll take over for you.” He rested a hand lightly over hers’, where they were clenched tightly around the soul gem, just as they had been for hours so far.

It still took her a second to understand what he was getting at. Then Caleb saw her hesitate, visibly. He saw her press the gem closer to her chest protectively, apparently on instinct. “I’m all right,” she murmured.

Caleb wavered for a moment, wondering how best to say what he truly wanted to say, then decided to go for broke. “I want to,” he said. “I, I just. I want to be close to him. For a while. Please, Yasha. I’ve missed him, too. Not as much as you have, I’m certain, I just—” He ran out of steam, he ran out of words. Caleb’s shoulders slumped, his gaze fell to the floor, and he bit back a sigh. “Please.”

One second passed, then two, then three, until Caleb felt her take hold of his hands, felt her guide them to uncurl and open. He let himself be guided, and then he felt the cold, heavy weight of the jewel laid against his palms.

Immediately, he curled his fingers around it and held it tight. Then he looked up just in time to see Yasha nod in tentative approval.

“It really seems to help if you keep him close,” she said, laying a hand just over her heart for evidence. Even in the dimness, Caleb saw the shadow pass across her eyes before she added: “_Please_ keep him close, Caleb.”

“I will,” Caleb whispered, clutching the gem so tightly that his knuckles started to hurt. “I promise.”

Whatever she saw on his face seemed to satisfy her. Yasha even smiled, brief and weary, before she moved away to take over keeping watch, leaving Caleb to settle down in the space between Beau and Jester that she’d left behind. After a moment, he even rucked up his shirt so he could press the gem more directly against his heart. It was cold, at first, cold enough to make his breath catch. But then the icy chill started to fade, then the smooth black surface started to warm. Maybe it was a sign that he was reaching Molly, that his friend was calmed by his presence. Maybe it was simply a natural transfer of heat. Caleb decided to let himself hope, just this once, and closed his eyes.

It was easier than he expected to sleep.

_His dreams were fevered, strange, and deep._

_In his dreams, he and Molly were both naked, both bared to each other, both sprawled in a tangle of limbs together in a warm, soft space that might have been a bed without end. They were both kissing one another desperately, frantically, trying to press closer though not a breath could pass between them, as if neither would be content until they’d crawled inside each other. _

_“Please, Caleb,” Molly gasped against his mouth. “Oh, please don’t let go.”_

_“Never,” Caleb vowed, furrowing his fingers in Molly’s hair and pressing their brows together. “Molly, my Mollymauk, I’m here, I’m sorry, _ich liebe dich…”

_After that, there were no more words. There was no more breath to spare and no more time to waste. There was only warmth, touch, and joining._

He woke feeling disoriented but well-rested, still holding tight to the gem. He woke remembering enough of the dream to make his heart speed up when he dwelled on it, to make him dart an anxious glance around to see if anyone might have noticed him getting worked up in the night. He couldn’t see anything in their expressions – Caleb still wasn’t necessarily good at reading people, but some of his friends were also very bad at masking their true feelings, especially when the opportunity for teasing presented itself. They simply seemed focused on the day ahead, as he knew he should be.

So he simply stole a moment in the frenzied early morning rush of packing to duck unnoticed into a corner, stare down thoughtfully at the gem for a long, long moment, and then bow his head to press a soft kiss to it.

He fancied that he felt a soft pulse of warmth in return, and felt the faintest of smiles tugging at his lips. He made sure to hide it before he went to pass the gem back to Yasha. Signs of life were good, signs of calm and acknowledgement were even better. But there was still work to be done today.

Admittedly, there wasn’t _much_ work. Caleb got them to Zadash, Jester and Caduceus went and bought enough diamonds for four resurrections, Fjord and Nott went to restock on healing potions, Beau and Yasha kept him company while they thought about where to stay for the night. Beau suggested, half serious, that they set out from the city today anyway – even if they wouldn’t make it anywhere near to their destination before having to rest, at least they wouldn’t be stuck with the sense of staying still while a friend was suffering.

Caleb half seriously considered taking her up on her plan, but forced himself to take a deep breath and reconsider.

In the end, they bought themselves a night in the Pillow Trove.

And, all throughout the day, they took their turns with the gem, holding it close and tight to share their presence with Molly and make sure he knew that he wasn’t alone anymore. Once or twice, Caleb even overheard some of them murmuring quietly to it. They told one another that it was for the sake of giving each other a break from bearing the burden of another soul. They all knew that this was only half-true – now that Molly was out of hell and safely in the keeping of the Mighty Nein once more, there weren’t any further incidents of empathic blowback. It wouldn’t _really_ have been that much of a strain for only one of them to take charge of the jewel until they could attempt another resurrection ritual.

But they all wanted to be close to him and, until tomorrow, this was the only way they could be.

“Do you think he knows we’re going to fix him?” Jester asked quietly, as she and Caleb sat on the floor of her room, sharing a plate of fruit. “He knows we’re not going to just leave him as a rock forever, right?”

Caleb let his eyes drift to Fjord, who was currently taking charge of the gem as he spoke in a low voice with Caduceus. He let himself mull over the fact that, for those who had been hit the hardest by their trip into the Demogorgon’s domain, holding the black jewel seemed to be an additional comfort. A day had been enough for him to see that the trip had left its marks on the minds of his friends – the way Fjord kept them all at arm’s length, the way Nott flinched if any of them came too close and watched them all with wary yellow eyes, the way Jester was unthinkingly aggressive to anyone who got in her way. But having the sense of caring for a friend seemed to help ground them.

It wasn’t a sustainable solution, but he was grateful for it for now.

“He knows, Jester,” Caleb said, and hoped he was right. “I’m sure he does. And tomorrow, he’ll see that his hopes are well-placed.”

In the end, no one put up a fuss or asked questions when Caleb quietly offered to take charge of Molly while they slept.

_Once again, his dreams were intimate and intense. But this time, as he dreamed of making love to the tiefling he thought he’d lost his chance with, it was in a space that had the sense of grass beneath them and an open sky above. It was better, and it was warm, and they could be truly together again for a time._

* * *

No one spoke much the next morning. Everyone was simply intent on gulping down as much breakfast as they could respectively stomach, packing up their things, and waiting with varying degrees of visible impatience as Caleb drew a teleportation circle. Once the runes chalked onto the floor lit up with light, they all piled in, suffered through the brief sensation of falling and cold, and stumbled out once again between the twin hills halfway along Glory Run Road.

Yasha recovered her bearings first, and moved immediately to start digging up Molly’s grave for the third and hopefully final time. There was a brief discussion among the rest of the members of the Mighty Nein about who would join in on the resurrection ritual – in the end, it was decided that Jester would cast the spell, and that Caleb and Beau would join Yasha. No one even dared to question the idea that Yasha would lend her voice to the attempt as well.

Jester’s hands were shaking badly as she started to count out the required number of diamonds from her pack. She nearly spilled them all out over the grass before Caduceus drew close to her and held her steady. As Caleb watched them both, he heard a wince from just beside him, and glanced over to see that Beau had chewed a nail so fiercely that she’d drawn blood. She met his eyes in an unmistakable challenge when she saw him looking, and he was quick to look away.

After what felt like a minor eternity, Jester moved to stand beside the worm-eaten tapestry and called the other three over to join her. Yasha’s hands were steady as she reached down to unwrap it, revealing a pathetic pile of bones and tattered cloth. But Caleb caught sight of the tears shining in her eyes as she straightened up, stepped quickly back, and quietly awaited her turn.

Jester spoke the incantation she’d had to speak too many times. The diamonds shattered, and the dust hovered above Molly’s remains, lit with a radiant inner light that cast fragmented rainbows over all of them. And then, as her chanting slowed, the others stepped forward one by one to fulfill their part.

Beau went first. Her offering was a small bottle of ink, identical in hue to the tattoo of an everseeing eye that now graced her back. “I know you’re going to give me shit over this, so just, just come back already so we can get it over with.”

Yasha stepped forward next. She drew the battered, dogeared book of manners from her pocket, opened it up, and pulled free a sprig of silk snapdragons. “I saved these,” she said simply, and laid them down tenderly on the tapestry beside the bones. “I always think of you when I look at them. And I’ve never stopped missing you.” Her voice broke at last, and Caleb saw the tears start to fall like diamonds down her cheeks “_Please_ come back to me, Mollymauk.”

And then it was his turn. Caleb’s offering had been chosen for him – he would complete the ritual by shattering the soul gem here, safe within the web of Jester’s power, so as to hopefully set Molly free with minimal shock or damage.

After that…well, after that, they had no way of knowing what would happen next, and that terrified him.

But Caleb made himself step forward anyway, cradling the gem in his hands.

“You died for us,” he whispered, staring at the bones, staring at the tapestry they rested on. He thought back to a sunlit morning so many months ago when Molly had come bounding up to him out of the festival crowd and demanded he look for magic because everything around him was just so _wonderful ._ “We’ve tried to live for you. But it’s…oh, Mister Mollymauk, it has been so hard sometimes. We miss you. And you _deserve_ the chance to live for yourself, too.” He tightened his grip around the stone until his knuckles stood out white. He cursed himself for the feeling of tears stinging at his eyes. “We have a home now. _You_ can have a home. And we will never leave you again.”

He knew he couldn’t promise that, not really.

He sealed the promise anyway with a spark of power into the soul gem that shattered it like glass and set Mollymauk Tealeaf free.

Everything after that was chaotic and indistinct, a torrent of light and wind and power and shouting, a force projected outward that nearly made Caleb lose his footing. But he planted his feet and shielded his eyes and eventually, the tumult died down into nothing more than his friends frantically asking one another if they were okay.

Yasha’s gasp brought everyone’s attention snapping back to the tapestry and, as he blinked his vision clear, Caleb saw immediately why she’d cried out.

The bones were rearranging themselves into a proper skeleton, aided and guided by muscle and sinew growing from nowhere.

A few of the Mighty Nein looked hastily away. Caleb and Yasha didn’t look away once. He hated himself a little for being fascinated but, well…it was an undeniably _unique_ sight.

And, perhaps, a small part of him feared that if he didn’t see this through until the end, it somehow wouldn’t _really_ happen. Whatever Yasha’s reasons might have been, those were his.

So he watched until the end. He watched until the pathetic pile of bones turned themselves back into a tiefling whose lavender skin was adorned in tattoos of many colors and who’s red eyes opened wide to stare wildly around at them all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the curious, here's what Jester, Fjord, and Nott rolled when they failed their saves to resist the Madness of Demogorgon. 
> 
> Jester: "There is only one solution to my problems: kill them all!"  
Fjord: "Someone is plotting to kill me. I need to strike first to stop them!"  
Nott: "I can't allow anyone to touch anything that belongs to me. They might try to take it away from me!"
> 
> Also, Ghorvash isn't an original idea of mine - if you check the Demogorgon's Wikipedia page, he is actually mentioned as Demogorgon's spymaster. Whoops! Hope the big bastard won't be missing him any time soon.


	2. Plans and the Changing Thereof

For a moment that seemed to last a lifetime, they were all frozen in a stunned tableau, staring at Molly as Molly stared at all of them. Caleb was dimly aware that, on some level, he hadn’t _entirely_ expected to ever get this far, and yet here they were. He wondered if the others had felt the same. He was also dimly aware, thanks to the parts of him that weren’t entirely numb from shock, that Molly was trying to speak – he saw his throat working, saw him opening and closing his mouth, but only pitiful, rasping croaks emerged.

Then he started trying to struggle to his feet and, predictably enough, lost his footing halfway up and then fell back with a choked gasp of pain.

That was enough to shake Yasha out of her stupor. She visibly shook herself, in fact, before crossing the short distance between them, dropping to her knees beside her friend, and reaching out to hold him steady. He looked at her and she looked at him and Caleb saw, from a safe distance, that she was crying openly now.

“Mollymauk?” she asked, her voice very soft. “Do you…I mean, um, do I—I mean, ah—” She started to dissolve into a fit of giggles, weak and wet and disbelieving and mildly hysterical. “I mean…hello. I really did miss you. I don’t know if you remember me. It’s okay if you don’t. I’m still so glad to see you.”

Then she leaned forward and – slowly, carefully, giving him so much time to pull away even in his disoriented, clumsy state – wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close in an embrace.

Caleb saw the answer to her unspoken question in the way Molly clung to her in turn.

The sight of them together made the dam break for the rest of the Mighty Nein as well. Caleb didn’t even remember consciously moving – it was simply that suddenly they were all together, all crowded around Molly and Yasha, and most of them were trying to talk at once. Fjord was in tears, Beau was on the verge of tears, Jester was smiling so big and brightly that Caleb was dimly surprised it didn’t _hurt_, and Nott’s voice rose above them all.

Only Caduceus was silent, hanging back on the edge of the throng. Caleb met his eyes and the firbolg smiled reassuringly. Caleb had no doubt that the other cleric had a spell to calm emotions at the ready for the first sign of things starting to bubble over. He smiled back gratefully before turning his attention back to their recovered friend.

When Molly spoke, it was weak and hoarse and faint. But when he spoke, they all heard it, they all listened.

“How?” Molly rasped. He was leaning against Yasha, drawn back against her chest and clinging tightly to one of her arms, staring at them in something like _disbelief_. And then: “Wh-why?”

It was a simple question, a single word, and yet Caleb didn’t understand. Something in him refused to understand what that question _meant_. He saw that the others were similarly incredulous.

Of course, it was Beau who first allowed herself to understand.

“’Why’?” she asked, frowning. “What kind of question is that? Did you…fuck, Molly, do you really think we’d have just _left_ you there once we knew what the fuck was going on? It was—” Her voice wavered. She closed her eyes, took a steadying breath, and tried again. “It was one thing when we could tell ourselves that you were just, I don’t know, kicking back with the Moonweaver and eating dates. We didn’t know something like _this_ had happened.” Caleb saw her eyes starting to gleam with the threat of fresh tears. “The only reason we left you like that for so long is because we didn’t _know_. We weren’t strong enough to find out when you first…y-y’know. But now we are. And I don’t care if we only knew you three fucking months, _no one _deserves that. I don’t care if we only knew you three months, you’re still our friend, you _asshole_.”

And then, probably motivated as much by embarrassment as anything else, she went to him and pulled him into a doubtlessly bone-creaking embrace. Yasha was happy to surrender him for that long, and Molly was - after an impressively brief hesitation – happy to hug her back.

Caleb knew just how grounding Beau’s hugs could be, if only because the sensation of your spine being realigned was one that couldn’t help but focus you. It certainly seemed to do the trick for Molly – without letting go of her, he lifted his head from her shoulder, half-opened his eyes, and pointed first at Fjord, then at Caduceus.

“Oh, ah…” Fjord said, ducking his head, smiling almost shyly. “Yes, I suppose this would seem a bit strange. I had a bit of an exciting time of things, for a while. I’ll catch you up to speed, of course, but something tells me you might find some of it less surprising than the rest.”

Molly’s smile grew more pronounced. He gave Fjord a thumbs up as Beau finally let go of him, then he nodded over at Caduceus.

“Hi,” said the firbolg. “Caduceus Clay – good to finally meet you. Don’t worry if you don’t recognize me. We’ve never met. But it’s nice to meet you now.”

Molly bobbed his head in acknowledgement and waved. Caduceus happily waved back.

It was around about then that Jester, after getting a chance to breathe and steady herself with Molly otherwise taken care of, remembered that she’d been given charge of Molly’s new clothes. So she pulled off her pack, went rummaging around inside, and retrieved a shirt and pants in the style of the Empire, along with a many-colored hooded cloak in the more geometric fashion of Xhorhas. It wasn’t quite as impressive as Molly’s old coat had been – it couldn’t have been, not under such short notice and with as quickly as they’d been moving. But Caleb saw him running his fingers appreciatively over the dyed swirls and patterns, smiling all the same. The sight eased another weight off his heart.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Caduceus lay a hand on Fjord’s shoulder and jerk his chin towards one of the hills. Fjord shook his head, and Caduceus raised an eyebrow, before he turned to Nott instead. They exchanged a few words, and Nott nodded, and together the two of them started off toward one of the hills on the side of the road. It only took a second before he understood – since Jester had cast the resurrection spell and Caleb had teleported them all here in the first place, it would be up to Caduceus to secure them a decent shelter for the night.

The fact that Fjord had declined to accompany him was strange. Fjord rarely turned down a chance to meditate by Caduceus’ side for a while. Perhaps he simply hadn’t wanted to move away from Molly, even for an hour, but Fjord had become a fairly devout man in recent months and Caleb would have just as easily expected him to want to take some time to send up a prayer of thanks to the Wildmother for helping guide them all to this point.

Judging by what he could see of Caduceus’ face before the firbolg turned away, Caduceus was just as surprised. But he was also an ever-practical sort, and Nott’s company and watchfulness would do just as well for now.

“It’s all right, Mollymauk,” Caleb heard Yasha say, making him look back at the huddle cluster of the others. “They’ll be back in a little while.”

Sure enough, Molly was looking confused, even anxious to see Caduceus and Nott departing, looking to all of them for an explanation. His earlier questions, weak and faint as they’d been, seemed to have nevertheless drained him of words entirely for now. That didn’t matter. He was easy enough to read, always had been – at least in the ways that mattered – and Caleb understood even now just how difficult and fragile words could be sometimes.

So he settled down next to Yasha, reached out to squeeze Molly’s shoulder in additional reassurance. “_Ja_, just a while. They are just going to make us some shelter for the day, Mollymauk. We will rest, you will rest, and tomorrow we will go…I don’t know. Wherever you want.”

And even if some things were strange in indistinct, indescribable ways, being able to say those words aloud and mean them made Caleb’s heart soar with joy.

“I wouldn’t mind if we had to sleep outside today, though!” Jester chirped, shading her eyes and scanning their surroundings. “I feel _really_ great right now, you guys. And if anything tried to mess with us, I’d tear it to pieces!”

“You certainly seem to be quite fond of that idea lately,” Fjord said in a low voice, staring intently at her back. "I'd hate to think of you deciding one of us might sate that urge." If Jester heard him at all, she gave no sign. 

Beau winced and Yasha frowned and even Molly could clearly tell that something was strange, above and beyond what might be expected. He looked between them all, frowning and trying to speak in what seemed to be at least a mildly painful effort and Yasha was, for the moment, too distracted to notice.

But Caleb noticed. Caleb took a chance, clicked his fingers, and summoned Frumpkin right there in Molly’s lap. His familiar appeared, currently wearing their favorite shape of a ginger tabby, and immediately set to work purring up a storm and kneading his front paws into Molly’s chest, blinking slowly up at the tiefling. The chance paid off, the guess proved well-founded. Molly was immediately distracted from the strangeness and his distress at it, instead gasping happily and setting to work lavishing attention on Frumpkin that Caleb didn’t even have to order the cat to pretend to enjoy.

“You will feel like shit for a few days, Mollymauk,” he said, keeping his tone easy and reassuring and not even having to try _too_ hard at it. This was, after all, a topic they could all speak on with some experience by now. “But it will pass. And we will be here to help you while it does. And we will be here afterwards, if you want us. But for now, let’s just get you through the night, _ja_? Caduceus will be done in no time.”

Weak and disoriented and sick as Molly was, the smile he offered Caleb was still so dazzling in its warmth and brightness that Caleb felt briefly dizzy from it.

It was the easiest thing in the world to sit beside Molly for the next almost-hour, watched over by Yasha and Beau, and guide his friend in playing with his cat until a towering temple to the Wildmother rose up beside the hill in answer to Caduceus’ summons.

The phantom temples that Caduceus or Jester could summon weren’t entirely similar to Caleb’s magic mansion. The effects were weaker, in many ways – they were, for starters, largely physical structures that appeared visibly and in their entirety on the material plane for the duration of the spell’s effects. They were less secure against physical intrusions; certain types of creatures could be restricted from entering, but not barred entirely if they were determined or lucky enough.

But attempts at intrusions could, except in very rare circumstances, _only_ happen via the temple’s single door. The walls and roof were even more impervious than the walls of Caleb’s tiny hut had been and could even block attempts at divination or travel from the Ethereal Plane. Caleb felt confident enough that, with the addition of his alarm spell, they would be safe here for the night even if they would be visible for a fair distance against the wasteland.

So Caleb felt no hesitation or fear in starting towards it along with the others. The only thing that made him falter in his pace was feeling a warm, newly familiar hand take hold of his.

He paused and looked back. Molly actually looked a little embarrassed, like he was considering pulling away now that he’d been caught out. Yasha was still at his back, waiting politely to keep following him, but Molly had chosen to take Caleb’s hand.

That was…surprising. But not bad. Far from it. Caleb still didn’t have the words for the emotions that bubbled up in his heart. All he knew was that they were warm and tasted sweet.

He squeezed Molly’s hand, gently keeping him from pulling away. “Come along, then,” he said. “I have your front, Mollymauk.”

Molly brightened instantly at the reassurance, his tail curling behind him like a contented cat’s, and so Caleb led him into the temple with Yasha following behind.

Caduceus being who he was, of course he’d worked to make the space as comfortable and welcoming as possible. From the outside, it looked like a worn stone structure, four walls and a spired roof. On the inside, it was as if they’d walked into a shaded forest glen – every inch of the wall was covered in a riotous tangle of plant life and the floor was scattered patches of dirt and moss and grass. Vines hung down from the ceiling, where a few skylights had been left clear enough to let in light and otherwise the trees that served as support pillars twined their branches together into a canopy. On the wall opposite the door, rising up from an altar of mushrooms, was an enormous symbol of the Wildmother carved from rosewood and twined with lilies.

The air smelled of loam and rain, undercut with a gentle, delicate curl of flowery incense. Jester and Beau had already bedded down into one of the eight mossy nooks built into the walls that would serve as beds for the night. Caduceus was settled by a firepit where someone had already gotten a fire going and was already at work turning a conjured lunch into something more than edible.

The rest of the day passed quietly and comparatively peacefully. Jester and Beau played cards for a while, and when the two of them got bored, they agreed to spar in a corner of the temple. That ended with a yelp of pain from Beau and her stalking away from an unconcerned Jester in a hurry, for the sake of tucking herself into one of the higher bed nooks to keep an eye on the temple with crossed arms and shadowed eyes. Fjord held himself apart from everyone, largely keeping close to the Wildmother’s symbol in what was, perhaps coincidentally, the clearest portion of the room. Nott had also sequestered herself up higher than the rest, and Caleb saw that she’d laid out her possessions in front of her, counting and recounting them again and again. But she spoke easily when spoken to, and occasionally came down for the sake of checking on Molly or joining in as Caleb and Yasha worked together to recount all that the tiefling had missed in the intervening months.

And Caduceus circled and cycled throughout the hall, passing out food and tea as needed, breaking up fights, soothing ruffled feelings. At one point, with an apologetic smile, he drew Yasha away to have a few quiet words with her in another corner. Part of Caleb wanted so very much to eavesdrop, but he focused on keeping Molly entertained and calm until she returned.

Eventually, the shafts of sunlight lancing down from above started to turn a deeper shade of gold, then started to fade as night drew near. A few of the mushrooms and patches of moss started to glow to compensate for the fading light. Caduceus and Jester cooked them up another meal and then, one by one, the Mighty Nein settled down to sleep. Though Caduceus had left enough beds for everyone, Caleb was gratified to see that he’d also made one extra large and extra deep, so that Molly and Yasha could settle down together without difficulty.

Caleb wound his silver thread around the temple, then took the bed next to theirs’, and the sound of Yasha’s quiet murmurs and Molly’s breathy laughter soon lulled him to sleep, despite his efforts and intentions to stay awake and listen.

* * *

When he was shaken awake a little while later, Caleb woke disoriented and groggy in the dark. His mind was a blur and even his perfect sense of time was momentarily gone from him. He was used to being woken up for a watch, by the morning, or by a mental alarm in his head that spelled trouble. None of that seemed to be the case now, and it disoriented him badly.

“Mister Caleb,” Caduceus said, in a low, soothing voice that cut through the fog and gave him something to focus on. “Sorry to bother you. But there’s something I think we should discuss, and now’s a good time to do it.”

“Mm. Fine,” Caleb mumbled. He had no idea what this could possibly be about, but the tone in Caduceus’ voice made it clear that this was no minor matter. So he sat up, shook his head to clear it, then got to his feet and nodded for Caduceus to lead the way.

This Caduceus did. Once they got to the door, he opened it, stepped outside, and immediately said: “Oh. Hello.”

Caleb ducked out after him and saw the reason for Caduceus’ surprise – Molly was outside as well, sitting right there in the grass beside the door, clearly having been interrupted in the act of stargazing. He flinched to suddenly find them both staring at him, and started to get carefully to his feet.

“It’s all right,” said Caduceus easily, leaning on his staff and smiling warmly at Molly. “Why don’t you hang around for a minute, Mister Molly? Now that I think about it, you should probably hear this, too.”

Still looking faintly wary, Molly nodded, then stepped around Caduceus to stand beside Caleb and hold his hand again. Caleb squeezed his hand, sidestepped a little closer so that their shoulders brushed, and together they waited patiently as Caduceus marshalled his thoughts. It didn’t take long.

“So,” Caduceus said, nodding amiably at them both. “I think the plan was always to take Molly somewhere safe for a few days while he sweats off the resurrection sickness. Right?”

Caleb nodded. What he didn’t say, and knew he didn’t have to, was that Molly would probably be off-kilter for rather longer than three more days after what he’d been through. He simply looked to Molly and added: “We were thinking either Nicodranus, to stay with Jester’s mother, or to Rohsona in Xhorhas, where we have a house of our own. Think about it and, and let us know which one sounds best, mm?”

Molly nodded immediately, already smiling again. Already feeling a little steadier at the sight, Caleb turned his full attention back to Caduceus.

“Now,” Caduceus said, once he had both their attentions again. “I think we should discuss a small addendum to that plan. I think you and Yasha should still take Molly along to wherever he wants to go and rest. But I think Beau and I need to take Fjord, Nott, and Jester somewhere that they can do some recovering of their own, and we’ll meet up with you later.”

Caleb opened his mouth to question why. And then he closed it. If he thought about the past couple of days for more than a second, there was absolutely no need to question why Caduceus was proposing this plan. “You think this is something you can fix?” he said instead.

“This isn’t a normal mental illness. It was forced upon them by a demon’s influence, and is only lingering this long because of that demon’s power. I think if I get them to a proper holy sanctuary – somewhere shielded, somewhere safe – that I can help them sweat it out, too.”

“The Blooming Grove?” It wasn’t a hard conclusion to come to. Assuming that Corrin had managed to return there with the cure they’d concocted for its corruption, it was the closest place Caleb knew that might count as a “proper holy sanctuary”. If Corrin had returned, other members of Caduceus’ family might have started to filter back home as well.

“That was my thought, yeah. You wouldn’t even have to waste a teleport. We could just walk. I think a nice, long walk could do them all some good on its own. And Jester could send you a message to let you know when everyone’s feeling a little more like themselves.”

Caleb frowned, rubbing his chin and staring down at his feet. He mulled the situation over in his head as Caduceus had laid it out, and felt no small amount of unease to realize that the cleric’s idea _was_ a good one. He didn’t want to split the party. They had only just truly come together again. And yet…

“You think they might be dangerous?” he asked.

“Not intentionally,” Caduceus said. “But I think they could cause some chaos without meaning to. I think, like Molly, they need to be somewhere quiet to heal. And I don’t think putting everyone who needs time to heal in a small space together is necessarily going to lead to good things.”

“Do you think you can convince them of that?”

“I think so, with Beau’s help. And I already talked to Yasha, if you’re wondering. She’s okay with this, if we can make it work.”

That was a weight off Caleb’s mind, and obviously off Molly’s as well. “Then I agree,” Caleb said. “I think this is the best plan we have.”

“Well, thank you. I’m glad you think so. I think we can all agree that this isn’t the greatest situation to be in, but—”

“But even if the reality of the situation is, ah, is unpleasant, we can deal with it all the same,” Caleb finished, cutting him off gently. “I know, Caduceus. I trust you. We all do.”

And he could see that his acceptance was a weight off Caduceus’ mind as well. The firbolg practically beamed, standing up a little straighter and nodding easily. “Well, thank you. That’s…thank you, Caleb.” He looked to Molly, raised an eyebrow, and added: “Hey, you. Did you follow that okay?”

Molly nodded.

“You okay with this?”

Molly frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then finally see-sawed a hand through the air.

Caduceus chuckled. “Yeah, that’s about where I’m at, too. But. We’ll make it work. That’s what a team does.” He started past them, back into the temple, and ruffled Molly’s hair as he went. Molly sputtered, ducking his head, and Caleb bit back a smile. “All right, you two, that’s all I wanted to say. Let’s get a little more sleep while we can.”

Neither of them had any objections to that and so followed him back inside the temple. Caduceus closed the door behind them, blocking out the night and leaving only the heavy, laden silence of plants growing and friends sleeping.

Caleb was surprised when, instead of rejoining Yasha, Molly hesitantly followed him to his bed instead. But, through a brief pantomime and some easy assumptions, it was simple enough to gather what the tiefling was getting at. “You know she wouldn’t mind you waking her up,” Caleb whispered, sitting down on his own bed and pulling his boots back off. “I think, ah, I think every time she opens her eyes to see your face, that will make her happy.”

Molly looked touched and pleased by Caleb’s assessment, but – apparently understanding that the assurance was not a rejection – also didn’t move. And, groggy as he was, that fact still did warm, fluttery things to Caleb’s heart that he was thankfully too tired to think too hard about. Even as weak and fragile as Molly obviously still was right now, being the full focus of his attention still felt like standing out in the warm spring sun.

“All right,” Caleb said. “It will be a tight fit. But if you don’t mind that—” He laid himself down on the side of the bed closest to the wall. “—come here.”

This Molly did, crawling into bed beside Caleb, reaching out to hold him and letting himself be held in turn. It took a little bit of shifting for them both to get comfortable, but less than Caleb might have expected in any other time. All too soon, Molly settled with his head against Caleb’s chest and his tail around Caleb’s leg, and fell asleep without further difficulty.

Caleb wasn’t long in following. He made himself stay awake a little longer to try and make absolutely certain to commit the moment to memory.

* * *

Whatever Caduceus said to the others the next day, it was indeed enough to convince them of his plan. The Mighty Nein prepared to depart the next morning with an eye towards parting ways for a time.

“Oh, Molly!” Jester opined with her arms flung around him. “We are going to miss you _very_ much! But Nicodranus is the best city in the whole world, and you can finally see the ocean and my mama is going to love you just _so _much! I will send you messages every day and even if you still can’t answer them, that way you will know we still miss you!”

“Really, now, take care of yourself,” Fjord said, smiling fondly over at his old roommate. “We’ll catch up as soon as we can.”

Molly was starting to look uncertain about the plan but, after only a moment’s further hesitation, he gave Jester a fierce hug and a kiss on the temple, then went to Fjord and gave him the same. Fjord actually let him do so, which was fast becoming a minor miracle in its own right.

Caleb watched the scene from a few distance away, where he was sat in front of Nott while Nott counted out the possessions and treasures she wanted him to keep charge of. “Caduceus, fine, _maybe_ I trust Caduceus,” she was saying. “But his family? These other fuckers? Too many unknown factors. But I trust _you_. And I know _you’ll_ keep my things safe so no one walks off with them, right?”

“Of course, Nott,” he said, looking back to her. “I promise. I will have everything back to you just as soon as you can come back to us.”

She beamed in visible relief. “I know you will.” Then, with some ceremony, she removed her necklace of buttons, reached out to take his hand, and wrapped it around his wrist in a makeshift necklace. “But _especially_ this, okay? _This_ is the most important thing. Fuck everything else if it means you can keep this safe.”

The sight of her, the feeling of the scuffed and worn buttons, the faintly musical sound they made all clattering together – suddenly, it hit Caleb that this would be the longest he’d ever been apart from her in a long, long while, and his throat went a little tight. “I promise,” he said, blinking his eyes free of stinging. And then: “Take care, Nott.”

“You, too.”

Once she’d overseen him packing all her possessions in with his other supplies, she threw her arms around him for a hug, too, one that he was happy to return.

Eventually, after all the farewells were exchanged, they gathered together outside the temple. Caleb found a relatively clear patch of ground and drew a teleportation circle that would take them to Yussah’s tower. Just before he drew the last line, he looked back at the assembled group of Fjord, Nott, Jester, Beau, and Caduceus.

“See you soon,” he said, soft and heartfelt.

Then he drew the last line, the circle blazed to life, and he made sure that Molly and Yasha made it through before he followed along at the last possible second.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Temple of the Gods" (7th Level) - 
> 
> "You cause a temple to shimmer into existence on ground you can see within range. The temple must fit within an unoccupied cube of space, up to 120 feet on each side. The temple remains until the spell ends. It is dedicated to whatever god, pantheon, or philosophy is represented by the holy symbol used in the casting. 
> 
> You make all decisions about the temple's appearance. The interior is enclosed by a floor, walls, and a roof, with one door granting access to the interior and as many windows as you wish. Only you and any creatures you designate when you cast the spell can open or close the door. 
> 
> The temple's interior is an open space with an idol or altar at one end. You decide whether the temple is illuminated and whether that illumination is bright or dim light. The smell of burning incense fills the air within, and the temperature is mild.
> 
> The temple opposes types of creatures you choose when you cast this spell. Choose one or more of the following: celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, or undead. If a creature of the chosen type attempts to enter the temple, that creature must make a Charisma saving throw. On a failed save, it can't enter the temple for 24 hours. Even if the creature can enter the temple, the magic there hinders it; whenever it makes an attach roll, an ability check, or a saving throw inside the temple, it must roll a d4 and subtract the number rolled from the d20 roll. 
> 
> In addition, the sensors created by divination spells can't appear inside the temple, and creatures within can't be targeted by divination spells.
> 
> Finally, whenever any creature in the temple regains hit points from a spell of 1st level or higher, the creature regains additional hit points equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum 1 hit point).
> 
> The temple is made from opaque magical force that extends into the Ethereal Plan,e thus blocking ethereal travel into the temple's interior. Nothing can physically pass through the temple's exterior. It can't be dispelled by dispel magic, and antimagic field has no effect on it. A disintegrate spell destroys the temple instantly."


	3. Where the Sunset Meets the Sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a shorter chapter today, but the next one should hopefully make up for it!

Of course, Jester had messaged ahead to warn of their arrival. It was early enough, however, that – despite the warning – Yussah turned out to not deem it worth his time to rise from his bed to deal with them. Wentworth was waiting just outside the teleportation chamber with a plate of tea and cookies and a gentle but insistent shuffling towards the door. They went without complaint, with Caleb and Yasha giving Molly what support he needed as he recovered from his first trip by teleport.

Given the Tidepeak Tower’s close proximity to the ocean, the ocean was the first sight to greet Molly’s eyes as they stepped out into the early morning sunshine.

The way his eyes widened in wonder at the sight, the way he pulled away from both of them to hasten closer for a better look, was one of the single most gratifying sights Caleb had ever known. Caleb hated to steer him away from his obvious desire to go down to the water, and was relieved when Yasha took his side. She knew as well as he did that, once they did go down to the beach proper, that would be the day for all of them. Only the setting sun could have torn them away from its embrace. It would be best to check in with Marion first.

They took a somewhat meandering path through the city on the way back to the Lavish Chateau, the better to give Molly at least a chance to sightsee a little. Caleb bought them some fried fish skewers on a whim to supplement breakfast and so, by the time they arrived at their destination and gave their names to Bluud, the Ruby of the Sea had been awake for a little while and was just finishing up making herself presentable.

“Come in!” she called when Bluud knocked on her door. He opened it, announced the Mighty Drei’s arrival, then stepped back to shoo them all inside.

Marion was seated at her vanity like a queen upon her throne. She set down the brush she’d been running through her hair, then turned to regard them all with warm eyes and a bright smile. “Ah, hello!” she said. “Jester’s friends, yes. She told me you would be coming. Caleb, Yasha, and—” She pointed at each of them in turn, until she came to Molly and hesitated. It was the briefest possible pause, however – then her smile only grew more radiantly welcoming, and she got to her feet and came over to clasp Molly’s hand in both of hers’. “Yes, you must be the new friend Jester mentioned. Hello and welcome! It is always a pleasure to meet the people important to her. Please, call me Marion. And you are?”

Molly was already looking faintly overwhelmed, simply staring up at her in a wide-eyed loss. Caleb hastily stepped a little closer to intervene. “_Fraulein_ Lavorre, we are pleased to introduce you to Mollymauk Tealeaf.”

The Ruby of the Sea hadn’t risen so highly to prominence solely by virtue of her unearthly beauty. Her memory proved as good as Caleb had hoped – she raised an eyebrow, her gaze snapping to him and scanning his face intently, but otherwise letting no sign of shock or disbelief show. Caleb gave her a small nod and then continued on smoothly. “I am afraid he, ah, he has been through something of a recent ordeal. He is still not one for talking. Not yet.”

Understanding dawned on her face – she couldn’t have known everything, but given her line of work, she almost certainly understood trauma and the forms it could take. Her expression was gentle, even motherly as she looked back at Molly. She raised the hand she still held to her mouth and pressed a kiss to his fingers. Caleb saw his fingers twitch, saw that Molly looked about on the verge of passing out. Yasha clearly saw it, too – moving with smooth, practiced subtlety, she laid a hand at the small of her friend’s back, and it was enough to steady him a little.

“Well, whatever your trials, I am glad you have survived them to come here today,” Marion said. If she noticed the little display at all, she gave no sign. “And I hope that Nicodranus will help wash any lingering pain away.” Looking between Caleb and Yasha, she asked: “You will be staying here, I presume? How many rooms should I prepare?”

“Ah, about that,” Caleb said, staring down at his feet. “We can’t be certain of how long we will be staying, so, er, s-so it doesn’t seem right to impose on you for an indeterminate length of time. We will secure our own lodgings.”

“Caleb,” Marion said, and he heard the smile in her voice. “It is _not_ an imposition.”

But he shook his head and held firm. “It would feel that way to me. To us. Our visits to you are, um, they are supposed to be a way for you to see your child again, and we could not bring her with us this time. And you have no need to trouble yourselves. We are more than capable of making our own arrangements.”

For evidence, he rummaged around in his component pouch, then drew out the silver spoon and small, ivory statue of a door which served as the spell components for the magic mansion. Marion stared at them politely for a moment, before she said: “I assume this is a sign of some magic way to give yourselves a comfortable place to sleep for the night?”

Caleb nodded.

She sighed lightly, resting a hand against her cheek. “Well, if you are going to insist, I am hardly going to keep you prisoner. _But_ I just want it known that my offer stands, no matter how long you need to stay here. And, please, if you have the opportunity to come and see one of my performances, I will _ensure_ that a table is left open for you.”

“That would be lovely,” Yasha said, speaking for herself for the first time since reintroductions had been made. “Thank you so much.” Caleb gave a slightly guilty startle and glanced her way, suddenly worried that he might have been speaking over her. But she didn’t seem upset. It seemed as if making absolutely sure she and Molly would have a chance to hear the Ruby of the Sea sing had been the first thing she’d seen as _worth_ speaking up for.

Though, when Marion did gently insist that they all stay and have breakfast with her, Molly and Yasha both jumped at the chance to accept however they could. And, when a table set with jewel-bright fruits and lavish pastries was assembled in Marion’s chambers for them, Caleb couldn’t really find it in himself to refuse, either.

It was well into late morning, approaching afternoon, by the time they finally left the Lavish Chateau. Molly made it clear that he wanted to sightsee or go down to the water. Caleb managed to persuade them both to wait long enough for him to summon the door to the mansion against one of the inn’s outer walls, before immediately setting it to be invisible.

“There we are,” he said, brushing chalk dust off his hands and turning back to his two friends. “We won’t have to walk very far at all to see one of her shows.”

A part of him wanted to drag Molly inside now and show him around. He remembered some of their earliest conversations in the cart on the way to Zadash, back in the days when the silver thread had been all the protection they’d had at night. Back when he’d only been able to _dream_ of commanding magic like this, and Molly had encouraged him.

_Look_, he wanted to say. _Look, I did it, I’m stronger now, I can protect you and care for you and keep you safe like I couldn’t before._

_Look, _he wanted to say. _I kept a room waiting for you, just in case._

But he reminded himself sternly that none of this was for _him_, this trip was for Molly to rest and recover, and rest and recovery did not involve taking care of or coddling Caleb.

So, at long last, they headed on down to the ocean instead.

It turned out to be a longer walk than expected, as the streets occasionally diverted them away from and around an otherwise straight path to their goal. Caleb and Yasha might not have normally noticed, but Molly soon started to flag. He clearly wasn’t intending to vocalize as much – Caleb only noticed when he saw Molly clinging grimly to Yasha’s arm and Yasha helping him along – but he was panting slightly and unsteady on his feet by the time the ground beneath their feet changed from cobblestones to sand.

Caleb frowned, concern tightening in the pit of his stomach, but made himself say nothing. It had been a while since he’d last suffered the effects of resurrection sickness, but he knew how insidious the weakness it brought could be. He knew how _frustrating_ it could be. By rights, Molly should have spent the rest of the day in bed, but…that had never been his way, and it seemed that death and a torturous afterlife hadn’t changed that.

That thought probably shouldn’t have been as comforting as it was.

And it was worth it when they finally reached their destination, when the sea stretched out before them in all its endless blue and white-capped glory. Just the sight of it made Caleb’s heart feel at peace, made some of the tension bleed from his shoulders.

The effect on Molly was even more gratifying. He pulled away from Yasha as if even just the taste of proper ocean air were returning strength to his limbs. He took a few steps nearer to the ocean and then stared down at his feet in faint surprise at the feeling of sand shifting under his boots, looked back to see the trail of footprints he was already leaving behind him.

Then he grinned so big and bright, punched the air, and set off towards the water at the closest thing he could currently manage to a jog. Caleb and Yasha watched him go, traded smiles, and set off to follow.

Molly flopped down into a sitting position right at the edge of the incoming waves and set to work struggling to pull his boots off. Once his feet were free, he tossed the boots aside, rolled up his pants to the knees, and shrugged off his new cloak. Then he got back up and waded into the water, only to almost immediately lose his balance as the surf rolled in around him. Caleb’s heart was seized in a brief flutter of panic, but it quickly proved to be unfounded. Molly kept his feet, barely, pinwheeling his arms to stay balanced and _laughing_ all the while.

Caleb let out his breath in a soft sigh of relief, then set to work divesting himself of most of his clothes, too. He made sure to fold everything, the better to minimize the chance of sand getting absolutely everywhere later, and in the end was left in his shirt and his rolled-up pants and his medallion. He would wait a little while longer to undress completely and swim out to float for a while, but was resolved not to leave the beach today without taking that time for himself.

The day was still young, after all. He’d have time.

And he barely had time to finish getting himself in order before Molly was there, grabbing his hand and dragging him along, into the water and up to his knees, waving for Yasha to follow.

They lingered there together for a while among the waves, hand-in-hand-in-hand, swaying and staggering and recovering as the waves rolled eternally in and out. Molly’s joy was absolutely infectious, and neither Caleb nor Yasha could stop smiling as they watched him and, eventually, as they started relaying some of the things they’d seen and done out on the ocean as pirates. They had to shout somewhat to be heard over the ocean’s constant roar.

Eventually, Molly and Yasha somehow got the idea for Molly to settle himself on Yasha’s shoulders to see if they could keep their balance and also to let Molly see further on the horizon. _Once a circus person, always a circus person_, Caleb thought fondly, as he watched the two of them get into position. Molly was still clumsy and weak, but he moved with practice and Yasha’s hands were sure and steady. With surprising speed, the tiefling was up on the aasimar’s shoulders, her hands gripping his ankles and one of his hands wound through her hair, the other shading his eyes as he scanned the horizon apparently for the sake of it. His tail twitched and lashed against Yasha’s back like that of a cat sizing up a bird.

“You know, Caleb,” Yasha said. “I could probably fit you up here, too. You’re still _very_ skinny.”

“I’m all right down here.”

Caleb felt vindicated for his caution when, barely fifteen minutes later, an especially and unexpectedly large wave rolled in that caused even Yasha to lose her balance, sending her and Molly both tumbling into the water with a yelp and nearly submerging Caleb entirely. Caleb just barely managed to keep his head above water, though the spray still left the taste of salt on his lips and his bangs in his eyes. By the time he got his eyes clear and blinked the world back into focus, it was to see Molly helping Yasha back up to her feet – her mane of black and white hair had been plastered flat to her head and halfway down her chest and back, completely obscuring her face.

Caleb bit the inside of his cheek to stifle a laugh. Doing so got even harder once he saw the face Molly was making.

“Yes, I know,” he said, wading closer to help them both to shore. “It tastes _terrible_, doesn’t it?”

Once they staggered back up onto the sand and got Yasha’s face clear, she and Molly both seemed to agree that spending some time ashore would be a fine idea. “I’ll show you how to make a sandcastle,” Yasha said, as together they wrung out her hair, and Molly responded with a double thumbs up.

Caleb watched them settle down and get started in the peaceful, comfortable silence that had always been and would, it seemed, always be uniquely their own. Then he turned away, moved a little ways down the beach, and finished undressing himself for the sake of wading fully into the water.

He didn’t know how long he floated there, blue beneath and blue above, letting the gentle rocking of the ocean slowly wash every thought out of his mind and every frisson of tension out of his body. It was, as always, the most perfect and complete sense of freedom he had ever known.

* * *

They passed the rest of the day out there, until the sun started to sink below the sea, until the three of them had put the finishing touches on a sandcastle, until the fact that they hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast sank in fully.

By then, their boots had dried, so they pulled themselves together and made their way back towards the Lavish Chateau in the hopes of a meal and a song.

As she’d promised, Marion Lavorre made certain that both were provided.

Yet as her song echoed radiantly throughout the air, as she made her graceful way around the room to favor guests with a touch or a smile, Caleb found his attention largely fixed on Molly. It helped that he was certain the other tiefling didn’t notice – Molly was absolutely, visibly entranced by the Ruby of the Sea, even more than he had been that morning. He watched her raptly as she sang, as she moved, braced on his elbows and leaning across the table, his tail swaying gently in time to the music.

He looked so happy. Molly was alive, and he looked so happy.

_I am better than I was_. The thought came to Caleb suddenly and, at first, he wasn’t sure why. But as he mulled it over there in the dimly lit tavern, he found that it was a thought that didn’t entirely _not_ fit. It was an idea he could allow himself to half-believe. There were still so many caveats to go along with it – Molly knew _nothing_ of his past, of what he could be capable of with the wrong provocation – but the fact remained that Caleb was cleaner and braver and _better_ than he had been when Molly had known him last. Back in the days when his attraction to the lavender tiefling had been just another thing to torment himself with, another dream that could never be, and yet something he was as helpless to escape from as the tides trying to escape the pull of the moons.

Back then, he’d thought the best he could ever hope for was to follow in Mollymauk Tealeaf’s wake and admire his brightness for as long as fate allowed them to stay together.

Now, so many days and miles later…

_I am better than I was_.

Maybe it was something about the music or the food or the rosy, intimate dimness, but Caleb found himself entertaining the idea that maybe, just maybe, that might mean he was _good enough_ to confess his feelings and have a prayer in all the hells of having them matter.

After all, he’d always suspected, even back then, that Molly would be the one most likely to accept his past.

It wasn’t a thought he could do anything about right now. Molly had been through so much and was still so fragile. He needed rest and peace and safety. He didn’t need the questions and emotional upheaval that such a confession would surely bring, certainly not while he couldn’t even _speak_.

But…someday. Perhaps someday.

His fingers shook a little as he reached across the table to cover Molly’s hands in one of his. Molly startled a little in surprise, but then he looked over at Caleb and he _beamed_ and he threaded their fingers together. The feeling sent a jolt up Caleb’s spine and made his heart feel as if it had skipped several beats.

Caleb smiled back, gave Molly’s hand a squeeze, and together they turned their attention back to the song.

Perhaps someday could even be someday _soon_.

* * *

Later, after they’d cleaned their plates, after they’d stolen a few moments with Marion to express their profuse thanks for being allowed to attend the show, the three of them walked out of the building and across the courtyard to where Caleb had left the door to the mansion. They crossed the short distance arm-in-arm, or at least as much as they could given Yasha’s rather pronounced height difference over them both. But it felt right, all the same. Their shoulders were bowed and their feet ached pleasantly after all the day’s activity, and so they leaned on one another like it was the most natural thing in the world. Caleb only stepped away so he could open the door and motion them both inside.

He felt a vibrant little flutter of excitement in the pit of his stomach as he watched Molly get his first proper look at the house. “Here is where we eat,” he said, gesturing around at the room they were standing in, with its wide round table and its bare wooden beams and its fireplace already merrily ablaze. “And, and the kitchen is back there. There are servants, though you can’t see them, but they will take care of anything you might need. There’s food, _so _much food, so, ah, so if you get hungry in the night then they will make you something. Everyone’s rooms are upstairs, just there. You, ah…” He felt his face grow uncomfortably hot, found himself ducking his face towards the floor. “You have a room of your own, if you want it, but, ah, but Yasha’s bed is very big. I think the two of you will be comfortable enough. I can give you a tour tomorrow, if you want. This house, it, um, it stays around for almost an entire day. We’ll have time.”

There were more rooms, of course – training rooms and libraries and rooms for worship of their various gods and even a miniature garden lit by the warm illusion of sunlight. Every bedroom had a respectably sized bath attached to it. There were more rooms in this house than all of them combined knew what to do with, and he’d still barely scratched the surface of what this pocket dimension was capable of containing. Caleb knew just by being in the house how much food there was available. He knew with some certainty that they could have fed the entirety of the Lavish Chateau out of the magic mansion’s pantry and still had enough to stuff themselves sick.

But Molly looked so tired, especially with Yasha rubbing her hand up and down his arm in big, soothing strokes as she held him against her side. “Thank you, Caleb,” she said, smiling at him over the top of Molly’s head. “I think we will be very comfortable tonight. Come on, you.”

She kissed the top of Molly’s head and started to steer him towards the stairs. Molly let himself be led for a couple of feet, then something seemed to occur to him, something that made him gently disentangle himself from Yasha and return to Caleb’s side. Before Caleb could properly realize what was happening or even do much more than open his mouth, Molly kissed his cheek and ruffled his hair in a silent, smiling good night, before he returned to Yasha and let her continue to lead him up the stairs. The two of them waved back over their shoulder to Caleb, who found himself briefly, wonderfully helpless to do much more than wave back to them before trailing in their wake.

Like an adolescent in love, he laid a hand over his cheek, safe in the knowledge that neither of the other two would see, and he grinned just to himself. Even if he was the only one to step into his room that night, he could still summon Frumpkin with a click of his fingers and lay down with his purring cat cuddled up to his chest. He could still close his eyes safe in the knowledge that Molly and Yasha were right across the hall, probably already curled up together in a nest of furs. He could let idle plans for tomorrow play through his mind and quiet his thoughts, safe in the feeling that he was doing something indisputably good and right.

Which only made it more of a nasty shock when he woke the next morning to find Molly gone from the house.


	4. The Answer in the Sand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're getting this chapter early because I'm quite proud of it. I think this might be one of the best things I've ever written. If nothing else, it's certainly the softest thing to date. These boys continue to surprise me.

Molly soon found that it was quite impossible to get any sleep in the magic mansion. 

Getting any sleep in the temple from nowhere hadn’t exactly been _easy_, but he’d also been exhausted down to the core on that first night and – at least if Yasha or Caleb stayed close to him – that had been enough to overcome his hesitations. Even then, he’d still woken up in a cold sweat at some indistinct, grey hour of the night, and the only thing for it had been to gently disentangle himself from Yasha and go outside to feel real grass and solid earth under his feet. Caleb and Caduceus had clearly thought it was merely ordinary restlessness that had driven him out there, and he hadn’t had the energy to correct them. After all, maybe it had been. And at least he’d known that the fractured beams of moonlight shining down from the skylights above them had been real enough. At least he’d been too tired to truly dream.

No such mercies were afforded him on their first night in Nicodranus. There were no windows in this house.

_It was dark and he was trapped and he was _nowhere_ and _nothing_ and yet he was also surrounded by a sense of cloying, gleeful evil. He couldn’t move because he had no body to move, he couldn’t struggle because he didn’t have the strength, all he could do was plead to something that enjoyed hearing him beg._

_Please, you don’t understand, I’m not him, _I’m not him, _this isn’t _fair…

_And then there was only pain – a slow, cold, leeching pain. It was the feeling of being carefully bled, of strength and life and will and self. It was the sense that everything about himself was being picked apart and taken _away_ and there was nothing he could do about it. He was entombed, as good as buried alive, and even if the feeling of dirt in his mouth was nothing more than a memory it was enough to make him _scream_ just to hear something, just to delude himself into thinking he still had a voice._

**I don’t care what you call yourself, little mutt. ** _The voice of his captor was inside and all around him. _ **You made this deal. You chose this. And now you’re mine.**

_I didn’t I didn’t I _didn’t_…_

_More pain. It was feasting on him for the joy of it, for the pleasure of tasting his helplessness. But it was careful. He could tell that it was careful. He could tell that it would make him last as long as possible until it tossed the dregs of him aside and maybe by then he would even consider it a mercy and the very thought of that, the thought of an inevitable, _empty_ future, made him howl and thrash and struggle against nothing—_

“Mollymauk! _Molly!”_

\--except it wasn’t nothing.

Instead of shadows, there was a faint light on the inside of his eyelids. Instead of endless void, there was the pressure of arms around him, hands against his back, a racing heartbeat against his chest. He was tangled up in something soft that it took him a wild second to recognize as several furred pelts, and…and he could hear someone keening, high and wounded, could hear them sobbing and pleading so desperately that their chest probably hurt just like his did…

He could feel his own heart. His own limbs. Starting to burn with effort. 

He started to remember that he was real. That he was alive. And the one holding him was real, too.

He lifted his aching arms and wrapped them around her, clinging desperately, feeling himself trembling so hard that his teeth chattered._ Yasha_, he tried to say, but he could only make his mouth form the shape of her name. Nothing else in this room was _real_, but she was. 

“Okay,” she whispered fretfully, and he felt as much as heard her speak, pressed close as he was. “Okay. There we go. There we are.” He felt her running fingers through his hair and down his neck and could have died happily all over again then and there. He purred in her arms, the sound wet and watery through the tears, but maybe it could echo in her bones the way her voice was echoing in his. “Just, just breathe, just like that, it’s okay…”

But she wasn’t any good at offering spoken words of comfort, and he knew that, and it seemed that what he knew hadn’t changed. Somehow, it only made him love her more fiercely when she gave up trying to reach him with words for a while and instead started singing something in Celestial that had the cadence of a lullaby. She held him, rocking gently back and forth. He let her do so, basking in the feeling of the gentle motion and the solid warmth and her heartbeat and his.

After a while, he half-opened his eyes, and his gaze found the candle burning on the bedside table. She’d blown it out before they’d gone to sleep. She must have thought to light it again when she’d seen him starting to panic. He loved her for that, too.

“Okay,” she finally said again, after a while. “Mollymauk? H-How are you feeling now?”

He didn’t insult her by considering for an instant that she was asking him if he was _okay_. Instead, he sat back somewhat, grateful when she let him pull away but kept her arms on his shoulders. Then, by way of answer, he took a long, deep, steady breath, and let it out in a long, slightly shaky exhale. He let her see his chest rise and then fall. _Better_, he meant to say in doing so, and could see that she understood as much.

Her smile was brief and tremulous but no less relieved for it. “Good. That’s good. Um…I don’t know what to do now. Do you, um, do you want to try talking about it?”

He considered the offer for a moment, then shook his head. It was the second time she’d offered to ask a servant to fetch some paper and a pen so they could try to talk that way, and the second time he’d declined as gently as he could. He’d never had much cause for writing – his letters were slow and clumsy, his handwriting terrible. There was no possible way he could have captured all his thoughts on paper before they all flew away and out of his grasp. There was no point. 

She looked a little disappointed, but obviously tried to hide it. “Okay. Maybe we could go find something to eat?”

He shook his head even more emphatically. He knew that the sense of eating _not-real_ food was not what he needed right now.

In the end, they had a bath in the big, heated pool adjoining her room. Molly agreed to it as much for her sake as anything. She seemed so desperately relieved to be doing something for him that she thought might help. He was glad he had no voice, otherwise he might have let it slip out that he wasn’t sure if anything could help.

Though, in the end, washing and brushing out and re-braiding her hair turned out to be a lot more relaxing and grounding than he would have thought. If nothing else, his hands were steady and he felt sure about what he needed to do for himself by the time they dried off and returned to bed. 

The first thing he did was soothe Yasha back to sleep. He helped her wrap them back up in blankets and furs, then he laid down with her and purred anew when she held him close. But it was the easiest thing in the world to keep sleep at bay – the fear hadn’t truly faded, after all. And, instead, he simply stroked her hair and hummed gently to her, wrapped his tail around her ankle to give her some comfort, and waited patiently until she fell into a deep, restful sleep and left him alone to dwell. 

Then he carefully disentangled himself from her, got out of bed, got fully dressed, and headed for the door back outside to the real world. 

He considered at one point trying however he could to flag down an invisible servant and somehow, without a voice, request a paper and pen so he could leave a note. But the very idea seemed like an enormous amount of bother for very little point. He’d just be going out for a short walk, after all. He’d easily be back before dawn, before either of them had any time to miss him.

Molly opened the door to the mansion and stepped outside. He closed the door behind him, took a deep and appreciative breath of the sea-kissed air, then started off.

It was good, at first – he could feel his mind starting to wander, starting to come free of its anxieties and fears the way it always did when he had a road ahead and nothing much to do but walk it. He idly considered maybe trying to find a chemist or an apothecary who might be able to hook him up with something to _really_ help free his mind, then remembered that he had no money. Someone – probably Beau, bless her – had made sure to loot Molly of whatever gold he’d had on him before they’d put him in the ground all those months ago. Caleb had paid for everything since they’d arrived. 

He forcibly shoved away the momentary pang of disappointment. As long as he found a place, even if he couldn’t do anything about it there and then, he felt sure he could convince one of the other two to take him back here later and foot the bill. They seemed determined to spoil him however they could, which was…

Well, which was _weird_. 

He sort-of hated that they felt the need to do so and definitely hated how good it felt. He hated being confronted with how starved he was for attention. It left him feeling like every inch of his patchwork soul was its own reminder of what had happened. He didn’t want that. He wanted to escape that. He wanted to be like he was. 

Hence, the walking. It was a walk to prove to himself that he wasn’t as fragile as he felt. 

Unfortunately, after what absolutely couldn’t have been more than an hour, it was a lie that was already becoming harder to keep telling. 

He was already starting to get tired – limbs getting heavy, breath getting short. The weakness crept up on him so insidiously that, by the time he fully appreciated what bad shape he was in, he was already having to brace a hand against the walls of buildings to steady himself. This _sucked_. 

Hadn’t Caleb and a couple of the others mentioned something about “resurrection sickness”? That he’d feel like shit for a few days? How had they _known_ that? Had they died before? None of them had told him whether they’d died, too, though he supposed that even if they had, it probably (please dear Moonweaver, hopefully) hadn’t been quite as terrible as what had befallen him. 

Having to deal with this damnable weakness on top of all of _that_ really didn’t seem fair, in his deeply uninformed and very definite opinion.

Molly glowered fixedly at the road ahead, at the fellow late-night rovers making their way up and down the street around him. On top of feeling like he needed to sit down and catch his breath, he could also feel a faint numbness in his fingertips, a buzzing in his head to drown out the pleasant nothing that the walk before had granted him.

He felt reasonably sure that he was trying not to have a nervous breakdown and wasn’t at all sure if he was going to succeed. 

_Caleb_. In a way, a lot of what he was currently feeling went back to Caleb, for better or for worse. Somehow, a lot of Molly’s disorientation with the world he’d woken up with seemed represented by Caleb. Caduceus was fine. Caduceus was just a New Person. Molly quite liked meeting new people. The situation with Fjord was…strange, and he’d been sorry that whatever had parted the group had done so before he’d gotten the chance to ask what had happened with the accent and the dreams of seawater. Beau had been friendly, even affectionate in her own barbed way, but that wasn’t _such_ a surprise. Molly thought that they’d really been coming to an understanding, before…

Well. Before.

Molly gave up, slumped against the nearest wall, and slid down into a defeated sitting position, head tipped back to stare up at the stars, wishing desperately for something to smoke or rub on his gums to take these thoughts away. 

The Caleb he remembered had been shabby and anxious and quiet and he’d _still_ managed to make Molly’s heart do backflips apparently without trying or realizing what he was doing, just by speaking Zemnian or talking about magic or sometimes even just almost looking him in the eye. Something about him had made Molly want to protect him and keep him safe and stay by his side forever. _This_ Caleb seemed genuinely confident in some ways, seemed like he’d stopped trying to hide under grime. He seemed _content_ – not at peace, still weighed down, but like he’d found his place in the world, like he’d fully accepted that he belonged with the Mighty Nein. 

It really wasn’t fair. Molly had barely been able to avoid making a fool out of himself for Caleb before and now Caleb was still handsome and clever and kind but also happier and more confident and dressing _very_ well and how in all the hells was Molly supposed to deal with that? How was he supposed to keep it together at all?

He didn’t recognize the feeling of the laughter bubbling up in his chest until it spilled out of him, a fit of giggles that were only slightly hysterical, a fit which soon bloomed into full blown laughter right there on the street, hard enough to make him wrap his arms around his stomach. A few people probably stopped and stared. He was well past caring. It felt so _good_ to sit and rest and laugh to himself, all the moreso for being unexpected.

_Good job, Tealeaf_, he thought to himself, once the need subsided, once he was able to start to get his breath back and wipe tears of mirth from his eyes. _You just got dragged out of hell and now you’re sitting here thinking about how the one you fancy had the indecency to get even more attractive._

Truth be told, he was proud of himself. Maybe it wasn’t a rational reaction or a sensible reaction but it felt _right. _It felt good to realize that he was still capable of worrying about such things, that he still cared at all. It felt like _him_.

He was still adrift and afloat at sea but there could still be things that mattered to him that tethered him to shore.

With that thought in mind, it was easier to drag himself back up to his feet, turn back towards the Lavish Chateau, and start off at a clumsy stagger back in the direction he’d come from.

_I could tell him. _The thought came to him unbidden and unexpected and nevertheless made him grin. _I could tell him that I’ve wanted to sweep him off his feet since that bloody mine with its bloody gnolls and now I only want to kiss him more and so could he please tone it down a notch because he makes it hard to think straight around him. _

Maybe nothing would happen. Maybe something would. Maybe all that would happen was that it would feel good to have it out and said. 

As soon as his vocal chords felt like cooperating again, he’d do so and see what happened. He promised himself that.

His resolve about a lot of things faltered once he actually got back to the Chateau, however. He couldn’t actually see the door to the mansion anymore but, when he stepped up to the patch of wall he remembered it being on and ran his fingers over it, he felt it there, invisible. His fingers hovered over the doorknob, but he couldn’t make them close, couldn’t make his hand move. The mere thought of stepping back inside, of putting himself in that kind of space again, made him tired down to the bone. The very idea made him feel as if all the good feelings he’d managed to pull back together during his walk and after his nightmare were bleeding out of him all over the pavement. No, he _liked_ having his feet on solid ground. He liked not feeling as if he’d punch through the floor and fall back into the dark and the nothing if he put one foot wrong.

No, he wanted to stay out here. Not for too much longer. He’d just need a little while. Just to have a proper chance to mentally brace himself.

It was there, still staring at a wall like it might eat him, that Bluud the minotaur found him. Molly had really only seen him in passing the day before, as Caleb made their introductions and Bluud permitted them entry into Marion’s chambers. Here in the early morning, presumably as Marion slept, he was out attending to chores around the Chateau and of course saw Molly standing out in the open. 

He was quite gracious about it, too. Before Molly could even figure out how to apologize without words for…loitering or acting wrong or doing something incorrect in this place that was much too fancy for him, the minotaur was pressing one large, furry hand to Molly’s cheek, fussing that he felt a little chilled and that mornings in Nicodranus could be so cold, and inviting him to come inside and warm up. 

And of course, Molly was curious to see more of the building. And so, of course he accepted the offer.

This was how, almost before he knew it, he found himself settled in the building’s kitchen – large, dimly lit, with a couple of maids and cooks bustling around preparing for an eventual breakfast in between taking sips of tea and exchanging news with one another. 

There were two stoves, both already glowing orange with warm embers inside. He couldn’t quite sit down in front of one without getting in the way of foot traffic. But with some easy encouragement from Bluud, there was a corner beside one that he could tuck himself into and bask in the heat he hadn’t known he needed. The staff of the house apparently deemed this sufficiently out of the way and so were content to let him stay there and rest while the warmth chased away his early morning ocean chill. 

It was surprisingly comfortable. Molly leaned back against the worn stone walls, let his eyes fall closed, and focused on the sounds of gently bustling life around him and the heat of waking embers slowly suffusing his body.

It all felt so solid, and comforting, and indisputably _real_. It was a world he was blessed to have a second chance to be a part of, and here in this kitchen tucked safely out of the way of the people but not out of the way of the heat, Molly once again felt like he _was_ a part of it.

He truly only meant to sit and rest for a few minutes. But he was asleep again before he knew it, and this time his sleep was free of dreams. 

* * *

His waking was less peaceful. Molly came back to consciousness with the awareness that someone was shaking him awake, gently but firmly.

He then became aware that he’d fallen asleep in the first place. His eyes flew open and, sure enough, the first sight to greet him was Caleb and Yasha gathered around him in the corner by the stove, both frowning, though Yasha’s expression cleared up in relief as soon as their gazes met. “There you are,” she said, bending close to press a kiss to his forehead.

“Are you all right?” Caleb asked, his voice low and tight. 

Something about it made Molly’s stomach roil in anxiety. So he tried to make his answering smile and thumbs up extra reassuring. It wasn’t as if it was a lie, either – he was all right. The nap had been unintentional, but he could tell immediately that it had done him good. 

“Good,” said Caleb flatly. And then: “Why did you wander off? Without leaving any sort of note? We, we woke up and you were gone without a word and, and do you know how terrifying that was?!” His voice rose and rose as he talked until he was…not quite shouting, Caleb still wasn’t the sort of man to shout, but definitely talking in an unexpectedly, uncharacteristically loud and sharp voice.

Molly couldn’t help it – he flinched. His thoughts flew apart. And all he could do was stare at Caleb and shrug in exaggerated helplessness because what exactly did Caleb expect him to say to any of that?

Of course, he hadn’t meant to stay away long enough to worry anyone, he probably should have left a note, but being confronted with this…anger? It rattled him badly.

Caleb stared at him a second longer, and then he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “_Ja_, of course. It’s not as if you can answer, can you?” He half-turned away, trying to catch the eye of a cook or a maid. “Let’s get you some paper. We should have done it yesterday, I know, but—”

Some of the shock faded, to be replaced by a dull, buzzing whine of irritation. Caleb sounded _exasperated_ and it made Molly feel small. He didn’t deserve that. He knew he didn’t deserve that. And now he wanted to make Molly feel even smaller by sitting him down and making him write out his feelings in disjointed chicken scratch?

Was what had happened really such a big deal? Had Caleb really been so afraid that Molly would _die_ if he was out of their line of sight?

That didn’t sound like any way to live, for him or for them.

“Caleb, hey—“ Yasha was saying softly, laying a hand on his shoulder, but Molly couldn’t keep from barreling on ahead anyway.

He snapped his fingers, hard, to get Caleb to look at him, then aggressively shook his head. He didn’t need paper. He didn’t need to explain himself. He still meant it when he mouthed _I’m sorry_, slow and clear enough that even Caleb should have been able to read his lips, but the look on his face probably spoiled the effect somewhat.

Still, it seemed to take some of the wind out of Caleb’s sails. His shoulders slumped, and some of the exasperation on his face faded, to be replaced with a confusion that was almost wounded.

“Why didn’t you stay in the mansion?” he asked. “I, I understand if you were having trouble sleeping, but we have nights like that too, and, and there are rooms you can go to that—”

Molly forcibly shook his head. _Not good enough_. He didn’t try to say it but he thought it as loud as he could. The truth of them echoed in his bones. _Not good enough. _That place was bad for him, right now and maybe always. How did Caleb not see that? How could he not see the connections?

Why was this so important? Why did this have to be a conversation? Why did they want him to sit down and try and fail to explain how he was feeling so that all that would be accomplished was that Caleb would see yet another way he was clumsy and stupid and useless?

So when Caleb’s frown returned, when he started to say: “You are being—” and Molly knew the last word would be _some _variation on the word “ridiculous”, it was the last straw.

He shoved himself back up to his feet with a strength he hadn’t known he still had, flipped Caleb off, then shoved past both of them and towards the door back outside.

“Mollymauk--!” Yasha protested, grabbing his wrist. He pulled away and kept going.

Just as he was about to open the door, he heard Caleb speak again. “Molly?” And he sounded so lost, so hurt and sad, that Molly hesitated. He very nearly turned back. He very nearly let himself fully accept that he was being stupid and irrational and petty and cruel.

But giving ground wasn’t something he could bring himself to do when he barely had any at all.

So he forcibly pulled open the door and started off across the courtyard back into the city. Neither of them stopped him.

His indignant anger carried him all the way down to the beach this time, resurrection sickness be damned. It seemed as if he blinked and then he was there, alone, outside the city and facing the impossibly vast ocean that he’d seen for the first time yesterday.

Then he thought back to yesterday, to the sandcastle and the songs, to the laughter and the joy, and all his strength failed at once.

Mollymauk Tealeaf slumped to his knees, buried his face in his hands, and burst into tears.

He sobbed for what he’d lost and what he’d been through. He cried over the boundless fear that maybe he’d irreparably broken what Caleb and Yasha had been trying to put back together for him. And in the end, what finally made him slump to the sand and curl up in a defeated, frightened huddle was the feeling that maybe there’d never been anything tethering him to shore at all, that he was always going to feel adrift because nothing ever, ever lasted.

And there he stayed for a long, long time, because the thought of getting up again to face the pieces of whatever he’d left behind him was infinitely more terrifying than meeting Lorenzo’s gaze had been.

The first thing he knew of not being alone anymore was the sound of a seabird – not flying overhead, as so many of them had so far, but spiraling down to the sand, landing a short distance away, and then hopping slowly closer, making soft cooing noises.

He didn’t care enough about it to _really_ pay attention to details. But, when he heard the sound of something strange and organic and smelled the ozone tang of magic and then he heard careful, _familiar _footsteps crossing the last of the distance between them, he didn’t have it in him to be surprised, either.

Caleb sat down beside him with a heavy, tired sigh. Molly felt him reach out, felt feather-light fingertips in his hair. Surprise made him flinch – he felt Caleb’s hand freeze, felt him start to pull away. A wild thrill of fear lanced through Molly, chasing away at least a little of the numb exhaustion. He reached out almost before he realized it, catching Caleb’s wrist and holding it in place.

_Please_, he tried to say, and still couldn’t. But something about his body language and the trembling in his fingers said it well enough. After only a moment’s further hesitation, Caleb resumed stroking his hair. He even tucked stray strands carefully behind and around Molly’s horns in a way that only Yasha had ever thought to do.

The warmth of his fingertips made a needy shiver race down Molly’s spine. _He stopped wearing his bandages_, he thought to himself. Of course, he’d noticed that was the case since waking up right next to his grave. But somehow, it only fully sank in for him in that moment that the past few days had been the most he’d _truly_ felt Caleb’s touch in all the time he’d known him. It felt so _good_ that he thought he might get drunk on it.

Somehow, being the full focus of Caleb’s attention had always felt like standing out in the warm spring sun. And that much, at least, had not changed.

“I, ah…” Caleb began, after a while. “I have been thinking. About your difficulties in speaking.” That was such a diplomatic understatement that Molly actually snorted. He thought he heard Caleb chuckle before he carried on: “I thought perhaps it might be tied in some way to your resurrection sickness. And, er, maybe it will pass when that is over and done with. And that would only mean suffering in silence for another couple of days, Mollymauk. Not ideal, I know, but, um…and, and no one knows why this sickness lasts for specifically four days. It seems ridiculous, I know. Sorry.”

Molly managed to make what he hoped was a generally understanding, reassuring sort of sound. It was fine. It was okay that Caleb didn’t know. Of course this “condition”, for lack of a better word, didn’t make any sense. Few things did, when you got right down to it. It was frustrating, but that was how so many things worked. Caleb couldn’t be expected to know everything, even if it sometimes seemed as if he did anyway.

And besides, maybe Caleb was right. It could be something to hope for.

“I want to understand, Molly,” Caleb said softly. “How you are feeling. What you are thinking. You…you have been through an ordeal beyond counting, and I think we have all been trying to ignore that. And maybe sometimes that led to us ignoring you or talking over you without meaning to. But, but there are alternatives – perhaps not for long talks, but at least for…for something. For you to explain to us when you are hurting so we don’t make it worse, so we don’t—.” He must have realized that his voice was getting louder again – Molly heard him swallow, heard him fight to get his emotions under control. “Yasha says you have never been fond of writing, but—”

Molly held up a hand from his exhausted huddle on the ground. Caleb obligingly stopped, waiting patiently. With an aggravated sigh, Molly sat up, brushed aside some shells from the patch of sand in front of him, and slowly traced seven letters in it with one finger:

_bad at it_

“That’s fine,” Caleb said immediately, with such an unthinking lack of hesitation that Molly felt his stomach flip. “We could help. _I _could help. Anything to help you make yourself understood.”

His hands dearly wanted to start shaking. Molly refused to let them. Instead, in the patch of sand in front of Caleb, he wrote _good at it_, then drew an arrow from the latter message to the wizard and the former message to himself.

Then…how did he explain the next part? _How?_ Caleb talked like this was so easy, but for someone so quiet and shy he seemed as if he’d _always_ had a gift for understanding words, like he’d been born to it. Whereas here sat Molly, his hand hovering over the sand, paralyzed by indecision. His mind was a buzzing blur once again, frustration was hot and high in his throat and brought with it the taste of blood.

“Molly,” he heard Caleb whisper. He sounded far away but he also sounded so very gentle. Molly shuddered lightly as the human’s hand covered his and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Breathe, _liebchen_, just breathe. Take you time. I’m here, I’m not impatient, I’m not angry. We have time. _You_ have time.”

Molly drew in a shaky breath, let it out, squeezed Caleb’s hand back and shot him a pathetically grateful smile. And he turned the words over and over in his mind, surprised at the genuine weight to them. They _did_ have time, didn’t they? They had all day. And Molly had the rest of his life. That had been the point of all of this to start with, hadn’t it?

And if there was an upside to letting a friend find you in a crying fetal position alone on the beach, it was that anything after that couldn’t seem _quite_ as embarrassing as it might have before. And so, slowly and laboriously but no less determinedly, Molly wrote out between the two arrows

_didnt want u to think im stupid_

_I want you to like me_, he thought but, even now, he wasn’t quite vulnerable enough to confess. _I think I’ve always wanted that. I want you to think I’m worth your time. I want you to smile when you see me and enjoy talking to me and be happy when I’m close to you. Not just as a shield between you and the bad things. As—_

He’d been staring so fixedly at his words in the sand without seeing them or anything else, so that Molly only realized Caleb had moved closer when he felt their shoulders brush, felt the warm weight of his friend leaning a little against him. His thoughts flew apart all at once with a soft gasp at the feeling. He refocused himself on the world around him in time to see Caleb reach out and carefully trace some words of his own in the sand, right beneath Molly’s.

_I could never._

When they wrote out words like this, Caleb’s handwriting was almost as bad as Molly’s was.

Three little words – not even the three little words he’d died before ever having the chance to say – and seeing them there, spelled out in sand, suddenly meant absolutely _everything_. Molly stared at them, felt the world spin around him like they were a fixed point in space.

Maybe it should always have been obvious that Caleb would feel that way. Maybe he should have known that from the start. But to know something rationally and to feel it like a heartbeat were two entirely different things – he hadn’t appreciated how different they were until this moment. Maybe this had always been a ridiculous thing to worry about but the reassurance still felt like the weight of the world being lifted from his shoulders.

“Oh, Mister Mollymauk,” Caleb murmured, so very softly. Molly answered the words with a pathetic ittle hiccup – he realized then that he’d started to cry again. Rather than the wracking sobs that had plagued him earlier, however, these were just…tears, only tears that were happening and that he didn’t _want_ to hold back. Even so, Caleb reached out to wipe them away, brushing his thumbs across Molly’s cheeks, letting his touch linger against the curling lines of the peacock feather. When Molly at last lifted his gaze to meet Caleb’s again, he saw something in the other man’s deep blue eyes that was as boundless as the sea before them.

“I’m here,” Caleb whispered, exactly as he had before, when Molly had been trapped in the dark and Caleb had been the first good and kind presence he’d felt in almost longer than he could remember. “I’m here,” he said, just as he had in that strange, warm space where they’d both been free to touch and hold and join one another.

Molly had almost talked himself into believing that had merely been a desperate fever dream, even if he hadn’t been at all sure he was still capable of dreaming in that state. The alternative had been too indescribably wonderful to believe.

But now he knew, from the sound of Caleb’s voice and the look in his eyes, that it had been just as real as this.

Praying that he was making the right choice, praying that he wasn’t about to shatter something else precious into irreparable pieces, but driven on by an aching need beyond words, Molly slid a hand up to cradle Caleb’s cheek. He allowed himself a moment to exult in the sight of Caleb leaning into his touch, and then leaned in close to kiss him full on the mouth.

And he had his answer in the way Caleb kissed him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm glad that my reputation seems to have preceded me enough that no one was *really* worried about last chapter's cliffhanger. You all were entirely correct, but sometimes I have to make my own fun.


	5. Heavensent

They went and found Yasha so she’d stop worrying. It took Caleb turning back into an albatross to get a bird’s eyes view of the city before they found her, and then it took waiting and allowing her the well-deserved chance to sweep Molly into a bone-crushing hug coupled with a torrent of lectures and pleas to never, never do that to her again, which he couldn’t agree to fast enough or emphatically enough.

Then they adjourned to a bakery that had tables outside which would allow them a view of the ocean. Caleb drew a stack of paper out of his bag along with an ink pen, then set them on the table with no small amount of solemnity.

And so the Mighty Drei passed the rest of the morning and well into the afternoon finally, finally getting on the same page. They passed the pen back and forth from one to the other and no one was allowed to talk while someone was still writing. That was fine, though. There was no shortage of pastries and tea to keep their hands busy, and the view was always changing.

Molly was mildly surprised and decidedly pleased to discover that Yasha had the best handwriting of the three of them – Caleb wrote like a man more used to copying arcane glyphs than words, and Molly wrote like someone eager to get it over with as quickly as possible, but Yasha’s words were neat and even and even kind of cute, so much so that Molly felt moved to append a clumsy doodle of a flower to one of her sentences.

But in the end, it was Molly who had the most to tell. And eventually, surprising himself as much as anyone, he told it. It helped to find himself constantly, faithfully buoyed by Yasha and Caleb’s seemingly endless patience.

He told them about dying, and waking up in what he now knew to have been a soul gem around a glabrezu’s neck. He told them of the horrors of being trapped and isolated in the endless dark except for when he’d been tapped to be a battery. He confessed how very, very close he’d come to just giving up and letting himself break or go mad, and how even now, sometimes he wondered if he’d really held up as well as he told himself he had.

And he told them about waking up, to find himself surrounded by friends who were so much stronger and more confident and somehow even more _wonderful_ than they’d been before. About how he was so happy for them and yet the differences between them now just left him feeling as if he were even more hopelessly adrift and displaced.

_you moved on_, he wrote. _and thats fine. you shuldve. but i didnt get to move on with you. ive never really had anything to regret before. this is a hell of a lot to start with. _

Frowning slightly, Caleb answered: _It wasn’t our choice. You know that, right? We never wanted to leave you. We didn’t truly move on._

Molly was faintly surprised and more than a little pleased to realize that smiling in reassurance didn’t even hurt this time, not truly. _yes you did, _he said. _and thats okay. it really really is. i know it wasnt your choice. and you would have tried to fix me. and you did. in the end. that means a lot. thats not nothing._

He really was glad to be alive. It really was preferable to the alternative. That just made it seem even more unfair that there was all this nonsense in his head that wasn’t letting him properly _enjoy_ it.

But he realized that it really was getting easier to keep his head above water and properly face down those feelings, with the help of his two most important people sitting around a table with him and meeting him where he was.

_That is kind of you to say_, Caleb finally wrote. _Thank you. I _and here there was a long pause, Caleb with his pen hovering just above the paper, before he took a shallow breath and carried on _worried about our choices and what you would say for a long time. right up until two days ago, sometimes i still did._

_But just because we had to move on, that does not mean you were replaced. You can take up your old place. Or we can help you make it a new place. We want you with us. Really and truly._

Seeing the words spelled out there, immutable and clear, was such an indescribable weight off Molly’s chest. It was so much so that he found himself just resting his chin in his hand to read them once and twice and then again, especially when Yasha added her agreement by drawing a circle around them and tapping her pen so firmly against the paper that she tore a small hole.

They were words and a truth that he never should have _really_ doubted, perhaps. But now they were there, in ink and on paper, to truly stand against the traitorous anxieties in his heart.

Molly leaned over to kiss Yasha on the cheek, leaned over to kiss Caleb on the cheek, then carefully wrote _I do want that. Always. Really and truly_. And the sight of Caleb’s relieved smile as he read the words made Molly feel like he was flying.

Now that the rest of his life was starting to make something approaching sense again, now that it felt like the world might just keep turning, there were some other matters to address. Molly felt a guilty pang in the pit of his stomach as he picked up the pen again but didn’t let it stop him.

Instead, he let it urge him on to write _sorry about your magic house_, because it was an apology that was warranted, and he wasn’t quite so childish as to deny that much. _i know you’re proud of it. and you should be! its astounding how you can just make that now. its great to see you keeping everyone safe and taking care of them. i dont think ill never like it. its just _Here he floundered again on something to say before settling on _not right now?_

Caleb took the pen, squeezed Molly’s hands in both of his, and then wrote _I understand_ with a flourish. And then _I was never offended. I am not upset. It’s fine, Molly._

Molly had a feeling that this was technically true. He felt fairly certain that those words were true _now,_ but that Caleb had maybe also been a bit hurt before that his idea of doing something nice for Molly had backfired so spectacularly. Molly was clearheaded enough now to admit that this was a fair enough way for his friend to feel. He fancied that the apology seemed to take some of the bite out of that particular accidental wound but still resolved even so to be a little more gentle with Caleb in future, until the wizard felt as appreciated as he deserved to.

He started by leaning over to press a kiss to Caleb’s forehead, and grinned when such a simple thing still made Caleb blush and duck his head. Molly tapped the pen against the paper to get Caleb’s attention on it, where he wrote: _did you really keep a room for me?_

The question seemed to touch Caleb almost as much as the kiss on the beach had. Smiling softly, he replied _Of course_.

_i really do want to see it, sometime. maybe after things settle down. _Maybe after the Mighty Nein had all come together again, which he really did think would be sooner rather than later.

_I would like for you to see it. There is no rush. In the meantime, there is an inn not far from the Chateau where we can stay._

_thank you._

Now that that seemed to be settled, another weight off both their minds, another old wound bared to sunlight so it could start to heal, there was one other thing to address. Grinning once more, Molly slid his gaze over to meet Yasha’s and then very carefully wrote at the bottom of the last page: _i kissed caleb, by the way. properly. i think we’re together now._

_“Ach du Lieber gott,”_ Caleb whispered, putting his face in his hands.

Yasha chuckled, then slung an arm around both their shoulders’ and nudged her head against Molly’s. “I know,” she said. “I could tell from the second I laid eyes on you. Both of you.” She leaned over to do the same to Caleb. Molly could see through a gap in Caleb’s fingers that he was smiling. “All I can say to that is ‘it’s about time’.”

Molly burst out laughing, collapsing in a giggling heap against Yasha’s side, and even Caleb burst into a fit of helpless laughter, too.

They passed the rest of the day back on the beach, letting the waves wash them clean of the day’s stress and troubles. This time, when sunset loomed, they made their way back ashore a little earlier, so that Caleb could lead the way to an upscale inn a couple of blocks away from the Chateau, a place for merchant captains to truly enjoy their time ashore when there were no rooms available beneath the same roof as the Ruby of the Sea. He secured them one room – they all knew without words by then that there was no need for more. And then they went to go enjoy another one of Marion’s performances.

* * *

It was on the morning of the fifth day since Molly’s resurrection that he woke to the sound of Jester’s voice in his head.

_“Hi, Molly,” _she said from a thousand miles away. Molly’s eyes fluttered open in response – he’d barely been napping, really. The ceiling of their room at the inn swam into focus overhead. The place wasn’t quite as fancy as the Lavish Chateau was, but it was still the sort of place that painted clouds and temples and celestials and things on their ceilings.

_“Just wanted to tell you we're at Caduceus' house. We've been here for a little bit, actually. It's okay.”_

Rain drummed against the window outside, just as it had all morning. He was alone in the bed – Yasha had gone out to commune with the storm and with her god just before sunrise, assisted by a little gentle shooing from Molly when he’d noticed her hesitating. Caleb was at the room’s fancy, elaborately carved desk, writing something in one of his books.

_“Hope you're okay, too” _Jester finished, and it really only sank in for him then that she sounded so very tired.

He wanted to answer her. He wanted her to know that she’d been heard and that he wished her well. He felt the tether of the spell in his mind, connecting him to her and he knew that if he _could_ speak, she would hear it.

So there, in the lazy late morning with a dark sky outside, he took a deep breath and then he tried.

“Hi, Jester,” he whispered – his voice was rasping and faint, and he barely recognized it as his own, but still felt a thrill lance through him to realize that he _was_ speaking, that he was maybe even being heard and understood. “We’re okay. We miss you, too. Your mom says hello. She’s great. Nicodranus is…is pretty great. The sea is _amazing_.” He chuckled, the sound still breathy and weak but stronger than it had been. “We’ve been—”

And just as suddenly as it had appeared, the connection shattered, the spell ended. Molly frowned, curiosity and concern driving him to sit up and look around as if he could find an answer to that unexpectedness just laying around.

Fortunately, he did – or at least, Caleb had noticed him awake, had heard him speaking, and obviously understood what must have happened.

“Twenty-five words only, Mollymauk,” he said – his chin in his hand, his cat in his lap, his pen momentarily forgotten, he was looking at Molly and smiling. And then: “It is good to hear your voice.”

Molly grinned ruefully. “Good to be heard. Guess you were right.”

“I’m glad I was.” Caleb took a moment to scratch Frumpkin’s ears, then said: “This is the first she’s heard from you, so she will probably be contacting you again in just a minute.”

It was, in fact, fifteen seconds later when Jester’s voice resounded in his head again, loud and boisterous and overjoyed. _“Molly! You can talk again! Are you really feeling better? All of us say hi, and we’re really happy for you! We love you lots!”_

“Love you, too.” He counted out his words on his fingers this time. “I’m really feeling better. Caleb and Yasha have taken good care of me. Get better soon so you can see for yourself.”

There was no answer this time, but that was fine. He knew she was probably just being smart and conserving her magic up there in the wilderness. Even so, he hoped she’d message again soon.

Until then, he was well and truly awake, his lazy late morning nap brought to a boisterous end. Molly sat up properly, stretched languidly, then got out of bed and went looking for his shirt. Caleb went back to his writing, though not before Molly noticed the tips of his ears going pink, not before he noticed the way Caleb had to take an extra second to drag his gaze away.

That was still immeasurably gratifying, to say the least. They were two days and change into “being together”, whatever that meant, and Molly felt very definitely that noticing when Caleb was admiring his appearance would never get old. It felt as if he were allowed to _properly_ enjoy it, now, and he fully intended to.

In fact, he decided to forego his shirt entirely for a few more minutes. He instead padded across the luxuriously thick carpet to stand behind Caleb’s chair. He saw Caleb’s blush spreading further, and Molly took great pleasure in bending down, wrapping his arms around Caleb’s shoulders, and nuzzling carefully against his cheek.

“Whatcha workin’ on?” he murmured.

Caleb stumbled and stammered through a few nonsense half-replies, before settling on: “…ah. N-Nothing, um, nothing very interesting.”

“Oh, don’t be like that.” He pressed a feather light kiss just behind Caleb’s ear, and swore he felt the human shiver very slightly. “Everything about you is interesting to me, dear. Always.” Flirting was all well and good and fun and he was overjoyed at finally being able to do so properly again. “But if it’s really nothing that’s holding your attention…” He let himself trail off pointedly for a second or two, the better to draw attention to the way he pressed a little closer to Caleb, held him ever-so-slightly tighter. “…maybe I can hold your attention instead, hm?”

For a moment, it seemed like the very multiverse were holding its breath. Molly knew that he certainly was.

Then Caleb lifted a hand to trace idle patterns against the bundle of flowers that graced Molly’s shoulder. He leaned his head back against the tiefling’s shoulder to stare sidelong at him with half-open eyes and the barest hint of a smile.

“Oh? And how did you plan to do that?”

It was a convincing façade of confidence and ease. But Molly could still feel the way Caleb’s hand trembled finely, could see how far down his neck the blush had spread. He fancied he could even heard Caleb’s heart beating rabbit-like against his hands where they were clasped around the human’s chest – or maybe that was just his own heartbeat instead.

Molly hoped that his own attempts to conceal the sudden, tight fluttering of nerves in his stomach was half as convincing. But he wouldn’t mind if a few signs here and there betrayed him, either. He didn’t mind the way his voice shook with tremulous vulnerability and boundless longing as he answered: “Come to bed and let me show you?”

Caleb’s eyes fell closed in a moment of apparent deliberation. Molly saw him swallow. He heard as well as felt him take a deep, shaky breath in, then let it out as a long, steady exhale.

When he spoke again, it was without opening his eyes, and his voice was low and rough with emotion. “I would like that,” he said. “Very much.” One hand moved to clasp Molly’s tightly, before Caleb made to rise out of his seat and join Molly at the bedside.

When he saw how badly Caleb’s hands were shaking as he set to work undressing, Molly carefully laid his hands at his lover’s hips and made a soft, questioning sound. No words were said. No words needed to be said. Caleb nodded once, let Molly finish the job, and didn’t seem to mind when Molly took his time in doing so. Molly couldn’t have hurried if he’d wanted to. Not only were his own hands getting desperately clumsy with burgeoning excitement, but just the feeling of getting to run his hands over Caleb’s bare skin was sweet enough to be intoxicating all on its own.

Still, by the time they were both stripped and bared, he was starting to feel the first stirrings of anxiety, of hesitation – not for his own sake, but because Caleb seemed so tense, only growing moreso as the seconds ticked by. The offer was halfway to Molly’s mouth already – _we can take this slow, or stop, it’s okay…_

And then his thoughts flew apart like shooting stars as Caleb lifted his head and met Molly’s gaze directly with blue eyes that outshone the sun.

“I love you,” he said, and the words felt like being pulled out of hell all over again.

The tension bled from Caleb all in a rush, and then he surged forward to hold Molly’s face in both hands and kiss him with a passion and need that seemed boundless. Molly, already gobsmacked beyond measure by the words but helpless to resist such emotion and affection, stumbled back a pace with a startled squeak even as he pulled Caleb against him and held him close.

The end result was that the back of Molly’s legs hit the edge of the bed, overbalancing him just enough that he fell back onto the mattress and pulled Caleb with him. They fell together in a tangle of limbs and startled yelps and laughter, and even that didn’t keep them from kissing each other for long.

In fact, it seemed a minor miracle when Molly could catch enough of a breath to say: “I love you, too.”

Even now, Caleb seemed startled to hear those words said aloud and meant for him. Even now, Molly could see that he needed a second to comprehend them. And that was silly, but ultimately fine. Molly could be patient. They had time, after all.

The threat of tears were shining in Caleb’s eyes when he found his voice again. “Molly…” he whispered, leaning close to press their brows together, sighing softly when Molly furrowed fingers in his hair and held him close.

Then he seemed to give up on words and went back to kissing him breathless. Molly was far from complaining. The very idea of expressing this moment and these feelings in words seemed impossible.

So they didn’t try.

The rain lasted long into the afternoon, and they stayed in bed together for most of the storm. 

* * *

Molly was struck over the next couple of weeks by how truly complete he felt.

There was something about living together with Caleb and Yasha in the closest thing to genuine domesticity that any of them had ever known which left him basking in the sense of how very well they fitted together.

Caleb and Yasha were still both fundamentally quiet, awkward, shy people. And, upon finally having the chance to spend prolonged periods of time together without a crisis or a job to focus on, they came to discover that this made it easy for them to feel comfortable around one another, made it easy for them to while away entire hours in each other’s company without saying a word. Yasha really didn’t take up as much space as most people thought she might, which gave Caleb more space to breathe.

And Molly had always been good at making himself at home. He fitted himself into whatever spaces were left between them and was glad to do so.

Contrary to their early days in Nicodranus, now sometimes long stretches of hours would pass with Molly carrying the majority of any conversational weight, with both Caleb and Yasha only interjecting here and there and exchanging the occasional smile over the tiefling’s head. Whenever they were making their way somewhere, they gravitated naturally so that Molly stood on one side of Yasha and Caleb stood on the other like ducklings in her wake. Whenever they sat together, whether at a table or on the beach, one of them would soon find themselves leaning against her reassuring solidity.

And, as Caleb grew more accustomed to being around just the two of them, Molly even caught sight of him occasionally indulging in some of the easy affection with Yasha that she and Molly had shared since the beginning.

One night, when bad dreams woke all three of them, they all squeezed themselves into one bed together, and slept peacefully like that until dawn came to chase the last of the shadows away.

In Caleb and Yasha, Molly had everything he needed, and tried to give as freely to them as they gave to him. In Yasha’s hugs and Caleb’s kisses, he was finally able to get through the messy business of recovering and processing and move on to maybe, finally _healing_. Seeing the two of them growing comfortable and close with each other and knowing that he might have even indirectly had a hand in that felt like one of the best things he’d ever done.

The three of them were one whole, a matched set, even if it had taken some time for them to realize it. With the two of them beside him, Molly felt ready to face whatever monsters might still be waiting on the road ahead.

And when they finally had the chance to reunite with the rest of their family, he knew he would be ready to take on the world and follow them to the ends of time and space.

The call from Jester that they’d all been waiting for came later than they’d hoped but sooner than they’d rightly expected. _We’re all feeling much better_, she said_, So hurry up and come get us, we miss you!_

And when that call came, they lingered in Nicodranus just long enough to receive a letter from Marion to be delivered safely into her daughter’s hands. Then Caleb drew a teleportation circle right there outside the Lavish Chateau, and shunted them all into it, and the three of them reappeared in the Clay family kitchen.

They barely had time to get their bearings and blink their vision clear before the remainder of the Mighty Nein swept them up in hugs and greetings.


End file.
